


Battleborn

by catherineflowers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 07, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-06-22 19:57:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: When Brienne is taken ill late one night at Winterfell, it has serious ramifications for her and Jaime.





	1. Brienne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainTarthister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainTarthister/gifts).



Brienne wakes in the night to the sound of screaming.

She went to sleep to it too – the battle still rages outside the walls of Winterfell. Horses, men, the dead – she isn’t sure who is screaming. After three days and nights, it’s just white noise now.

She’s sore and exhausted, she’s been fighting out there all day, in the thick of the melee. She’s cut, she’s bruised, her throat is raw from shouting and rallying. She and her band of men had managed to cut a hole in the great swathe of the dead that had been clamouring at the main gate of the castle. They’d managed to rescue a group of others who had become trapped in a guardhouse, had managed to lead them back to safety.

Finally, come evening, there had been a break in the fighting and she’d been able to get her men back through the gates as well. She’d grabbed a bowl of thin stew from the kitchens, mopped it up with some stale bread and flopped into her bed for some rest, the first she’s had in days. She doesn’t even remember undressing.

The stew wasn’t good. This is what has woken her. She knew when she was eating it that it didn’t agree with her, her belly hadn’t felt right almost immediately, but she’d been too hungry to care. It was foolish thing to eat, in retrospect. They have been living under siege conditions, in winter, for a long time now – even with the snow, the meat must be rancid.

Now it’s much worse – the pain has tripled. It comes over her in a sickening wave and she thinks she is going to vomit. Then she thinks she’s going to shit herself. She staggers out of bed to the privy and just sits down in time – it all comes out in a big, watery gush.

Brienne sits there for a long time, alternately sweating and shivering, her guts gripped with rolling spasms that make her want to cry. She can’t be ill. She can’t be. She has four hours to sleep before she’s back on the battlefield. What is she going to do?

She manages to stagger up, but the pain has her doubled over again almost immediately. She’s bleeding, too, she notices with alarm. A couple of droplets on the flagstone floor. Oh, she has it bad.

She needs to find a maester. Get a potion, some milk of the poppy, something to get her back on her feet. Something to stop this.

She manages to get out of her chambers, but the corridor outside is deserted. Snow blows in from the open windows, but the sweat rolls down her, even in just her sleeping shift. Here the noise from the battle is so much more immediate than it was in her chambers. Here she can hear the ring of steel on steel, the horrible roars of the undead and the skitter of bones as they throw themselves at the castle walls.

Her belly twists again and she feels the unmistakeable urge to get to a privy – it’s absolutely searing. She wants to dash back into her chambers, but it hurts so much she can’t move. So much she can’t help but cry out.

Next to her, a door opens. A head pokes out. A head with red hair, a pale, pretty face. Sansa Stark.

“Brienne?” she asks. Brienne is on her knees, fighting the urge to let her bowels go. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine my lady,” Brienne manages.

“No, no, you’re not. What’s happened? Were you injured out there?”

Brienne groans, long and loud. “I think it’s something I ate,” she manages. “The stew …”

Sansa is looking at her with her worry naked on her face. But Sansa is good in a crisis, she’s got a clear head and she’s good with practicalities. She puts Brienne’s arm across her shoulders and helps her through the door into her own chambers.

Inside, the candles are lit and the bed is made – Sansa is dressed and is clearly unable to sleep.

“Lie down,” she urges, half-dragging a groaning Brienne towards the fur-covered bed. “Have some water. I’ll fetch a maester.”

“My lady …” Brienne gasps, her hand grabbing Sansa’s arm hard.

“Lie down!” Sansa insists sharply.

Brienne can’t – she just can’t. Under her shift, she feels something rolling down her legs and she’s petrified she’s lost control of her bowel at some point in the corridor. How can she get into her lady’s bed like this?

Luckily, Sansa has run from the room to fetch the maester, so Brienne is spared the embarrassment of sharing that particular fact with the Lady of Winterfell.

She’s in absolute abject agony now – the pain has her gripped in a tight fist from her belly down. Brienne hears herself let out a long, keening cry. She needs a privy. She _needs_ one now.

She tries to get up but her legs give way underneath her. She grips the furs on the bed in both her fists, trying desperately to hold her shit in.

Thankfully, wonderfully, mercifully, she spots Sansa’s chamber pot under the bed. She grabs it, thanking all the Gods in Westeros that it’s unused. She yanks her shift up and squats over it desperately.

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it _hurts_. The pain fills her mind until there’s no room for anything else. It takes over her body, makes her shake, makes her scream. There is a moment where it is so bad she thinks she’s about to die, where she thinks her body will literally explode, and then …

It’s over. It all comes out in a huge fat slide and gush, falling into the chamber pot with an audible splat. Brienne stares at the pot in horror.

Just at that moment, the door bursts open. In comes Sansa, with Samwell Tarly. With Podrick Payne. With Tyrion Lannister.

Everyone stops, dead in the doorway. Wide eyes. Open mouths.

No one moves. Brienne doesn’t either. Even the raging battle outside seems to fall silent.

Then, from the chamber pot – a strong, lusty cry. Brienne forces herself to look. She can’t believe what she’s seeing. She can’t believe it’s really real.

There, in the chamber pot, in a puddle of blood, in a puddle of fluid and gods-know-what, is a baby.

A baby! A baby boy, his eyes wide open, staring up at her.

Brienne gapes at him. Gapes at the others. No one has moved. She’s squatting there, thighs and shift and floor covered with blood, exposed to anyone who walks by.

“Help me,” she says, and her voice doesn’t sound at all like her own. It sounds like a scared, small woman’s voice. “Please.”

It seems to push everyone into action. They fly at her in a flurry of concern, Sansa grabbing her hands, Podrick helping her to sit back on the floor. Samwell Tarly goes to the chamber pot – to the baby.

“I had a baby …” she gasps. “A baby?”

The baby … he has a long _thing_ attached to his belly, a thick thread of what looks to Brienne like tripe. It attaches him to her, disappearing up between her legs.

“What is that?” she manages to gasp. “Is that normal?”

“That’s the cord,” says Tarly matter-of-factly. “Perfectly normal. We’ll get that cut. Have you not seen a baby born before?”

Brienne shakes her head. There’s so much blood! Not battle blood either, not good, strong scarlet. It’s dark, clotty and clumpy like moon blood. Brienne feels faint.

Tarly picks the baby up, his face a huge smile as he looks upon him. “He’s beautiful,” he says. “He has your hair.”

He rips a strip of cloth from one of his sleeves and ties it around the cord. Then he fiddles in a pocket and produces a little knife. Uses it to sever the cord. Podrick grabs a blanket from the bed, wraps the baby. Sansa pulls the sheets back. Together they help Brienne to lie down.

She protests. “My lady, the blood!” It’s still coursing down her legs.

Sansa hushes her. Sits her back, fluffs her pillows. Folds a dark blanket underneath her, to soak the blood.

Then Tarly puts the baby on her. He’s wrapped in the blanket now, but he’s warm and squirming. She puts her arms around him, but she’s frozen with shock. A baby … a baby! This is the first time she has even held one so young.

And he’s hers … her child. Her son.

“Excuse me,” says Tarly, and he puts a hand on her belly, hard. Manipulates her.

Her belly quakes in response, and something warm, wet and disgusting slips out of her. It’s horrible – it looks like a pound of offal, and it lands on the bed – Sansa’s bed! – with a meaty flop.

“There we go!” Tarly looks quite pleased with himself. “That’s the placenta.” Brienne thinks she is going to be sick. He bundles it up in the chamber pot and moves it to the table by the door.

Tyrion Lannister still stands there, still looking pale and a bit shocked. The sight of the thing in the bowl compels him to move across the room. He heads for Lady Sansa’s dining table, where there is a carafe and glasses. He pours himself a glass of wine. Drinks it in a single gulp.

“Lady Brienne,” he says in that rich voice of his. “Am I correct in saying that you have been out on the battlefield today?”

Brienne nods.

Sansa gasps. “You could have put your babe in danger! Why didn’t you tell anyone you were with child?”

“I didn’t know!” Brienne wails. “Truly! I’ve had no belly, no sickness. I knew naught of it until he landed in your chamber pot, I swear!”

“What about your moon blood?” asks Samwell Tarly.

“It often stops when I’m in a difficult situation. I thought nothing of it. I’ve had no belly – my clothes fit – my armour too! I – how is this possible?”

Tarly shrugs, a shy smile on his face. “You’re a … a big lady,” he says politely. “And your muscles are strong. You don’t always get a big bump, not the first time. Or so I’ve read.”

“You didn’t think it was a possibility?” asks Tyrion. “Excuse my impertinence, but I am assuming you have had relations with a man?”

Brienne feels her face burn. “Just once,” she admits. “But he pulled out! He did not spill in me, I swear.”

“Who?” asks Sansa. “Who is the babe’s father?”

Brienne opens her mouth. Closes it again. “I would not dishonour him,” she says.

Sansa’s brow creases. “It is he who has dishonoured you, Brienne. And your baby.”

Brienne looks down at the child in her arms, for the first time. He’s there. He’s real. He really is. He is rooting for her breast, his mouth wide open like a baby bird in a nest. She sees that Tarly is correct – the babe is as blond as she is. “No,” she says. Firmly.

“Then he is a Storm,” Sansa says with sadness. “A bastard of the Stormlands.”

“No no,” says Tyrion. He looks kindly at Brienne, with sympathy. “This babe is no mere bastard. His mother spent his birth day tearing through the army of the dead. And he’s born at night amid the sounds of raging battle. Let him take the surname Battleborn – I have no doubt that he will grow to be a brilliant warrior like his mother.”

“Battleborn?” Brienne manages a smile. “Yes …”

Tyrion raises his glass “To the battleborn!” he calls.

On cue, the babe starts crying.

“He’s probably hungry,” Pod suggests shyly.

“Oh!” says Brienne. “I have to … I have to feed him?” Her teats are so _small_ , is she even going to be able to?

“I’m not sure there’s a wet nurse in the castle,” says Sansa.

Samwell Tarly smiles. “I’ll fetch Gilly. She’ll show you. She’s something of an expert.”

“Th – thank you.”

“I’ll get some bits from my chambers too. We need to examine you, make sure you aren’t going to need stitches.”

“Stitches?”

“It all happened rather quickly by the looks of things. You can get injuries … down there.”

Brienne feels faint again.

“There are some baby clothes down in the grain storage,” Sansa says. “We created a winter store of clothing for emergencies and refugees. I will see what I can find to fit your babe.”

“Th-thank you my Lady,” Brienne says.

Sansa offers her a smile, but it’s a sad one. A smile of pity, almost. She leaves the room with Samwell Tarly.

Podrick seems to have gotten over his initial shock. Now he’s smiling broadly at the babe, perched on the edge of the bed. Brienne isn’t sure if she wants to hug him or slap him.

“I will take my leave as well,” says Tyrion. He finishes his glass of wine. Offers Brienne a gentle smile. “Quite an eventful night, I’d say. I know his arrival was unexpected but … congratulations on your baby, Lady Brienne.”

“Thank you, Lord Tyrion.”

“May I call on you in the morning to see how you and the Battleborn are doing?”

“Of – of course.”

“Listen,” he says quietly, so only she can hear. “Don’t fret about the fact he is a bastard. Once the war is over, I assure you that your son will always have a place at Casterly Rock. My brother told me how you saved his life, Lady Brienne. He has always spoken highly of you. Your kindness, your prowess as a warrior. He’s –“

Suddenly, Tyrion stops talking. A strange look crosses his face. He looks again at the baby. Leans over to peer at him, then closes his eyes. “Ohh,” he says. Almost a groan.

His eyes meet Brienne’s eyes. Vexed and perplexed.

Then Tyrion straightens his back, tugs on his tunic. Covers his expression with one of gentle diplomacy. “Goodnight, Lady Brienne,” he says. He pats her hand.

“Goodnight, Lord Tyrion,” she replies.

He leaves, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed.


	2. Tyrion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion is curious to get to the bottom of the events of the previous night.

After Tyrion has broken his fast with some stale bread, dried meat and some wine, he goes again to visit Brienne of Tarth and her unexpected child.

He hasn’t been able to get the events of last night out of his head – one moment he had been sitting with Podrick and Sam Tarly in the small hours, drinking wine and discussing books, and then next, Lady Sansa had burst in, saying that Brienne had been taken ill and urgently required a maester.

Podrick, it seemed, had grown quite attached to the woman while he had been squiring for her, and so dashed off with Tarly. Tyrion had joined them because it had felt rude not to.

He had been wholly unprepared for what had awaited them. The look on the Maid of Tarth’s face had been enough to stop a man’s heart. Shock. Fear. Horror. And the blood! It had covered her from waist to knee. It had taken Tyrion a moment to see the infant among it all. His first thought had been that someone had tried to gut the poor woman.

Unfortunately, that sight had not proved to be the most shocking thing he had faced that night. It had not been the sight of the blood that had kept Tyrion awake all night, pondering, trying to convince himself he was imagining what he’d seen.

The baby … the shade of his hair, the shape of his nose, of his little mouth …

But still … he’s not sure. He wants to see the babe again, clean and clear in the cold light of day. Without a skinful of wine to cloud his judgement.

Brienne is still in Sansa’s chambers, in her bed. He knocks quietly, so as not to disturb her if she is sleeping, but she calls out brightly for him to enter.

He goes in with a smile, and she returns it, looking clean and neat. The babe is suckling happily at her breast, and he too has been bathed and dressed in a tiny linen shift. He looks clean and content and quite bonny, though buried in his mother’s bosom, Tyrion cannot yet get a good look at his features.

“How was your night, Lady Brienne?” he asks.

“Eventful,” she smiles. “But I … I managed some rest in the end, my Lord.”

“You must be in shock.”

She nods. “Truly, I had no idea I was with child. I don’t think I even felt him kick.”

He offers her a reassuring smile. “Samwell Tarly told me that it’s not unheard of. And you have been somewhat distracted lately by our battles against the army of the dead.”

They engage in some light conversation – Tyrion discovers that Brienne has decided on a first name for her baby. The shock seems to have passed somewhat – she’s attentive and affectionate to the babe, though she handles him carefully as though she’s frightened she may drop or injure him. He looks impossibly small in her big hands.

“What will you do?” he asks. “Will your father have you back at Tarth?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her eyes downcast. “My father isn’t overly concerned with my propriety, and gods know I have given him much cause for shame, but this … leaving dressed as a knight and returning with a bastard child. It may be too much for him. Tarth may not bear my shame.”

Tyrion nods. She makes a peculiar daughter, and as kind as the Evenstar may have been in the past, there are not many noble fathers who would accept a bastard into their castles.

“Besides, the dead are still out there,” she says. “At the castle walls. My first duty is to fight them.”

“I understand.”

“But I have a favour to ask.”

Tyrion nods. “Please. If I can help you, Lady Brienne …”

 “Would you speak with the King in the North on my behalf?” she asks. “And her Grace … Daenerys … as well? Lady Sansa doesn’t think it appropriate that I return to the battlefield while my … my son is an infant. I am sworn to her, but … I can’t make her understand that I have had a child, not lost my sword hand.”

An interesting turn of phrase, Tyrion thinks, but says nothing of it. He sighs. “I’m afraid in this instance I agree with Lady Sansa,” he has to admit. “Not because I believe you are unfit for combat, Brienne, far from it.”

Her face sets itself into a sulky grimace. “Then why?”

“There are no wet nurses in Winterfell at the moment, correct? Not even another nursing mother. I doubt very much whether we will have animals for much longer either, unless we make a meaningful break in the siege.”

“All the more reason why we need all the fighters we can get!”

“And if you were to die on the battlefield, who would feed your child?”

Brienne opens her mouth. Looks down at her babe, with soft eyes that Tyrion notices for the first time are very pretty. Her masculine frame and strong features have been hiding someone quite gentle, he realises.

“You’d be condemning him to starve.”

She hadn’t thought of that, he realises. She nods, though the disappointment of being denied is naked on her face. Tyrion feels sympathy for her. Motherhood after all-but-knighthood is clearly going to take some getting used to.

Tyrion hasn’t paid Brienne of Tarth a lot of heed until this point. She’s always been … well, sort of _there_ , ever since they arrived at Winterfell. Dutifully following Sansa about, kicking Pod’s arse in the training yard, tearing through the front lines of the battle. At her height, she’s hard to miss.

He’d thought her curious, a bit of an oddity, but that was the extent of it. Now, he’s realising, he probably should have paid her more attention. He’s clearly missed a lot.

And of course, there was the fact she wielded Jaime’s sword …

He notices that the babe has sleepily fallen off her teat, and decides that this may be his opportunity.

“Do you need to do anything? I’d be happy to hold him while he sleeps. It’s been some years since I held a baby, but I was told I was quite good with my nephews and nieces.” Perhaps a poor choice of words – she gives him a look, as if she is trying to figure out his intentions.

“I could do with a visit to the privy,” she confesses nonetheless. She gingerly passes the babe to Tyrion, careful to support his small head. He snuffles and wriggles a little, but stays asleep. Tyrion strokes his little cheek - he’s warm, and he smells _lovely_. Tyrion feels a smile creep over his face that he just can’t hold back. Holding a new baby is a very special privilege.

Brienne eases herself off the bed, and limps away to the privy. She looks very sore indeed – how she would ever imagine she would be battle ready, Tyrion did not know. These warriors were all the same.

As soon as she has left the room, he takes the opportunity to have a very good look at the Battleborn. Now he’s cleaned up and looking less squashed from his abrupt journey into the world, his features are more apparent.

He sees the soft chin and high forehead of his mother etched on the little face, but the rest …

Well, Tyrion sees nothing that reassures him of the suspicions he had last night. If anything, they are even stronger.

His mission accomplished, Tyrion has another polite conversation when Brienne returns from the privy, passes the child back to her, and then takes his leave.

He heads off round the outer curtain of Winterfell, up on the battlements, watching the sorties of the dead. They seem to have slowed now, and the men are fighting with renewed vigour. He chats with some commanders, passing on Daenerys’ regards, though in truth he has not seen the Dragon Queen for almost a month. She has been away, with her Dragons, surveying Cersei’s army.

He takes the stairs down from the battlements and crosses the castle’s main courtyard. He makes his way up to the living quarters on the other side of Winterfell.

This is where the Starks once housed guests and visitors – the rooms where he had stayed when he had visited Winterfell with King Robert. A lifetime ago. He, Jaime and the other members of Kingsguard had been given the larger rooms, but Tyrion walks past these, to the smaller room at the end, where the night servants had been housed.

Now, two guards, Rober and Bern, if Tyrion remembers correctly, stand outside the small door, day and night. No one gets in without the Starks’ express permission.

Luckily, Tyrion has that permission.

Rober nods and they both step aside. Bern unlocks the door. Tyrion enters the room quietly, unsure if his brother will still be sleeping.

But no, Jaime is awake. He’s dressed, too – in leather breeches and a sleeveless linen tunic, and he’s exercising. Over by the large window, using the wrought-iron curtain poles to pull up on, his left hand grasping and his stump hooked over the top.

“Good morning, brother,” says Tyrion.

Jaime drops to his feet and turns. He’s sweating slightly from the exercise, despite the cold, despite his light clothes. The exercise is clearly paying off, too. Jaime’s muscles are well defined and press against his tunic in all the right places. A maiden’s dream, even in his forty-fifth year. His hair’s grown long and his beard thick.

“Tyrion,” he says with a sparkle in his eye. “How goes the battle?”

“Well, I believe. Their onslaught slowed overnight. The walls are holding. We may yet prevail.”

“Excellent. Tell the King in the North he needs more archers on the west wall, though. It’s a weak point. I’ve been watching them all night and it’s all quite slack.”

“I will.”

“Best tell them the notion is yours though, hmm?”

Tyrion laughs. “I will!”

He goes to the small, rough wooden table, where the remains of Jaime’s meagre breakfast sits. He takes a goblet and pours from the flagon, only to find they have given his brother water instead of wine.

“What’s this villainy!”

Jaime shrugs. “Supplies are low?”

“That’s inhumane!”

“If the dead breach the walls, I don’t want to be drunk.”

“Gods, I do.”

Tyrion takes a seat at the table, helping himself to the bowl of dried fruit. He leans back to regard his brother while he chews.

“What news from outside this room?” Jaime asks.

Tyrion purses his lips. Fixes his gaze on his brother’s face. “Now that you mention it,” he says. “A baby was born last night in the castle. Quite unexpectedly.”

“Ah,” says Jaime, coming over to pour himself a drink. “Give the new parents my best.”

“To Brienne of Tarth.”

Jaime spills his drink. Mops at it frantically with a napkin.

Tyrion stares at him. He knows his brother well – he’s always been a shitty liar. He can see Jaime is desperately thinking. Counting moons, probably. If he had a shred of doubt before, the look on his brother’s face has eliminated it.

“Brienne? Oh. How … how nice for her.”

“It’s a funny thing. Because I went to see her this morning. And her baby … well, he looks a _lot_ like Joffrey did as an infant.”

Jaime wrinkles his nose. “Babies all look alike to me.”

“I’d like to think so. Because Westeros has seen enough trouble thanks to my brother fathering bastards.”

Jaime sighs. He sits down in the chair opposite Tyrion and gives him a long, long look. Tyrion returns it, his brow furrowed.

“I pulled out!” Jaime protests eventually.

“She said the same thing.”

“She did?”

“Don’t worry, she was far too honourable to tell us who had fucked her.”

“Tyrion, it wasn’t like that. It’s not.”

“No?”

“No! You know what we went through together. You know what she is to me.”

“A warm cunt after Cersei disposed of you?”

Anger flares immediately in Jaime’s eyes. “You really think so little of me? When have I ever treated a woman so badly?”

“That’s what people will think.”

“People always think the worst of me. I’m used to it.”

“But she’s not. Nor is the babe.”

“You think I took advantage of her? Think back ... nine moons ago? I was rotting in Winterfell’s dungeon. I am not so skilled as to rape a wench while I’m chained to a post. Believe me, she was a very, very willing participant.”

Tyrion makes a face. He remembers the dark, dank conditions Jaime had endured down there. “You did it in the dungeons?!”

“Yes! Back when I spent every day thinking your Dragon Queen was going to feed me to her children.”

There is bitterness in Jaime’s voice. Deservedly so, Tyrion has to admit. He’s been treated poorly since he arrived at Winterfell. Foolishly. But as a Lannister himself, no one has been interested in his pleas to utilise his brother’s skills. Everyone wants to punish him instead.

“It was just the once,” Jaime continued. “I was cold and she was warm. A foolishness, really. I thought it may be a goodbye, and I didn’t care to die faithful to Cersei. And … I wanted Brienne. Gods help me but I did. I do. I told her it couldn’t be repeated, but I’ve spent most days since regretting that.”

Tyrion doesn’t know what to say. If he’s honest he’s surprised by the notion that his brother could be attracted to a woman such as Brienne – he’s never known him to even notice a woman other than Cersei.

“Why didn’t she tell me she was pregnant?”

 “She didn’t know,” Tyrion says gently. “Last night she thought she’d been poisoned by some rancid meat. The babe was a complete surprise.”

“Oh ... Brienne …”

“She is strong, Jaime. She’s in good health, and so’s the boy.”

“My son …” he looks down at the floor. “She can never tell anyone he is my seed, can she. The Kingslayer’s Bastard. Twice cursed, poor child.”

Jaime looks genuinely distraught – almost close to tears.

“Our father must be rolling in his grave. I finally get a child on a highborn woman, and she has to name him Storm.”

“No,” Tyrion says, as gently as he can. “He was born last night amid the battle. He’s hailed as Battleborn. Renly Battleborn.”

Jaime lifts his head. This is possibly the most distressed Tyrion has seen him yet. “ _Renly?_ ” Jaime asks. His voice like ice. “She named my son _Renly?_ ”

Tyrion winces. “I know.”

“Ugh, of course she did.” He looks like he could do with that wine now. “The child is thrice cursed, then – named for that fool!”

Tyrion sympathises.

“I need to see her,” Jaime says in a small voice.

“Jaime …”

“I _need_ to.”

“Don’t you think that would arouse suspicion?”

“Like the Starks could think any less of me!”

“It’s not you I’m worried for. If the Starks know you are the father of that baby they will question Brienne’s loyalty too.”

“Ridiculous. Brienne is the truest, the most trustworthy …”

“I know. But you think the Starks will see it that way? All they will see is that she lay with the Kingslayer and bore his bastard.”

“Would you give her a letter? If I wrote to her …”

“That sounds risky.”

“Stay with her while she reads it. Ensure she burns it after. You’re the Hand of the Queen!”

“I’m still a Lannister. Visiting you is one thing. Running correspondence for you …”

“Tell her, then. I just need her to know that I’m sorry. And that I – I love her. When this is over, if I’m ever free, I won’t desert her, or the babe. I’ll marry her.”

Jaime winces.

“No,” he says. “No, don’t say that – that’s shit. I sound like a shit. Tell her … tell her … oh I don’t know! I wish I wasn’t locked in this fucking room!”

He smacks his goblet hard, and it goes flying off the table, smacking against the opposite wall in a clang of metal.

Rober opens the door. Comes in, sword first.

“Don’t worry, Rober!” Tyrion calls, standing protectively in front of Jaime. “I just had a little accident.”

“As you say, my Lord.”

The guard exits, sealing the door behind him. Tyrion turns back to Jaime, and his heart immediately breaks.

He’s hunched over, his fist against his forehead, his eyes screwed tightly shut. He’s breathing hard. Jaime came North for redemption, came here of his own free will, and everyone has decided he can’t have it. Kept him prisoner rather than even allowing him the chance to die honourably on the battlefield.

Jaime has endured it with good grace, hoping they will see he has changed, hoping they will give him the chance to prove it. Instead, they have forgotten him, locked him away like an afterthought. It’s monstrously stupid. It’s monstrously cruel.

“I’ll tell her,” Tyrion whispers. Puts his hand on Jaime’s stump. “I’m pretty sure I can put it better than you can anyway.”

Despite himself, Jaime smiles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to read, comment and kudos chapter one - I was blown away.
> 
> Particular thanks to my personal _tour de force_ CaptainTarthister, who is as always unwavering in her cheerleading. Truly appreciate all the chats and the bolstering and the votes of confidence in my work. Such a privilege to get to know you my dear!


	3. Jaime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime thinks back on his relationship with Brienne.

Tyrion leaves, and Jaime weeps.

He doesn’t care that it’s pathetic, he doesn’t care if it’s stupid, or if the incompetent guards outside hear him. He weeps pitifully and openly at his tiny table, the tears coursing down his face. He stops and sniffs and goes to wipe his eyes with a hand that isn’t there, and that of course makes him start again.

Brienne …

He brings her perfect, homely, trusting face to mind, and it hurts like a sword to the guts. He needs to see her, he needs to talk to her. Seven hells – he needs to _hold_ her.

He can’t understand himself. He’s been in worse situations than this – hours from death, hand cut off, deep in the shit with Cersei. He’s never been anywhere close to tears.

This is different. All those times, he’d been a complete shit – a callous, murdering, Kingslaying bastard. He hadn’t cared because the consequences were inevitable. He’d deserved them.

This time, he’d been doing the right thing.

Seven hells – he’d honoured his pledge, he’d left Cersei, he’d rode North to offer his considerable experience and expertise in the battle against the dead. Houses and honour and oaths weren’t meant to mean anything anymore.

And he’d loved a woman. A good woman, a woman who he wasn’t related to, a woman who had inspired and encouraged him. A woman who had saved him. He’d _chosen_ her.

But all for naught. He’s been treated like shit, like an enemy and a spy. Locked up, chained up, left to rot while Tyrion and Theon Greyjoy and the Red Woman and even the daughter of the fucking Mad King got to have their redemption.

Brienne and their babe will likely join him in ostracism as soon as they spot the child looks like a Lannister.

He wants to burst out of here. Kick the door off its hinges, rip the heads off the two lazy, incompetent guards. Rampage around the castle until he finds Brienne and the baby and get the hells out of here with them both.

A good plan. Aside from the fact that the door is locked, and far too heavy to break, of course. Aside from the fact he has one hand and couldn’t tear the head off a dormouse right now, let alone two armed men and then a castle full of soldiers. Aside from the fact he has no idea if Brienne would want to go with him, and of course the trifling problem of the dead outside the castle walls.

Instead, he goes to bed. Hides under the blankets, where it’s quiet and dark and warm, and thinks about Brienne.

He can picture her. Feel her. Smell the scent of her skin so clearly it’s like she’s lying beside him. He’s had a long time to think about her, about their single time together – he can’t stop, despite the fact it upsets and arouses him in equal measure.

Now the thought that he had managed to put a child in her belly was almost too much.

Their encounter had happened on the day they had found him. _Caught_ him. He was asleep in a hayloft on the outskirts of a dreary little village overlooking Winterfell.

He’d been there a few days, and in the North for a few weeks, but he hadn’t approached the castle yet. He’d been trying to think of a plan, maybe a way to contact Brienne or Tyrion, have them talk to the King in the North on his behalf.

He had the money to stay at an inn of course, but the hayloft had felt safer. He hadn’t wanted to risk being recognised. Ironic since he was recognised immediately.

He woke to the sound of shouting, and before he had the chance to open his eyes, he was dragged out of the hayloft by baying villagers, farming implements held at his throat. Widow’s Wail and his golden hand were stolen within seconds. Then they tied him up and threw him over the rump of a skinny flea-bitten mare and rode him down the road to Winterfell. Dumped him in the mud in front of the King in the North.

Of course, everyone immediately assumed he had been in hiding. That he was trying to sneak into the castle, that he was Cersei’s spy and a saboteur. He wasn’t given a trial. He wasn’t even given the chance to speak.

The oh-so-noble fucking Jon Snow decided that as he’d killed Daenerys’ father, he was hers to deal with.

Jaime was taken to Winterfell’s dungeon, to the most ramshackle, gloomy cold stone cell they had, and chained to a post, his arms bound behind him. Locked in for good measure. And there he stayed. Expecting to be dragged out and eaten by a dragon at any moment.

It was freezing – the windows were nothing but bars and the snow channelled furiously through them, blowing straight down the back of his tunic, down his neck. As night began to fall, he started to wonder if it would be the cold that would kill him before the dragons.

Then she came. Brienne of Tarth.

Carrying a flaming torch, dressed in boiled leather, a long fur trimmed cloak about her shoulders. She looked good, as she had at the Dragonpit. Solid, healthy, but something else as well. A newfound confidence. Her chin high and her eyes strong.

She came into the cell most of the way, holding the torch out before her, getting a good look at his face before she spoke.

“It really is you,” she said.

“Who were you expecting, one of those famous Lannister impersonators?” he joked.

“What are you doing here?”

“Does anyone care?”

“Oh, they care. Cersei went back on her word. She attacked our army from the rear.”

This was news to Jaime. He’d spent the last few weeks on the road, avoiding human contact.

Brienne placed the torch in the crude sconce on the far wall – sadly too distant for Jaime to feel the heat of it.

“They think you’re here to do harm,” she said then.

“So I gathered.”

“Are you?”

“What do _you_ think?”

She regarded him carefully, her eyes roaming up and down his chained-up form. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

“You think I would do you harm?”

“I think Cersei would. And I think you’d do whatever Cersei bade you.”

That stung. He looked away. “I left her.”

“What?”

“Fuck loyalty, you said? I decided you were right. This isn’t about Lannisters and Starks and Targaryens and I have no interest in Cersei’s plans to fuck Westeros up the arse. I rode north because I promised I would fight the dead. I had planned to help.”

She stepped closer, her blue eyes lit bright by the torch. Her gaze searched his face. “I don’t think they’re going to believe you.”

“Believe me? No one has even thought to ask!”

She said nothing, but he saw her throat move as she swallowed.

He shrugged. “What about you? Do you still see the honour in me, Lady Brienne?”

“If you’re asking me to defend you …”

“Well … interject? Maybe?”

“My opinion counts for little. I am Lady Sansa’s protector, nothing more.”

“It matters to me.”

“Why? What I think has no bearing on what will happen to you, Ser Jaime, I promise.”

He sighed. He was too old, too cold and too weary, to play this game with her anymore. “It matters because the dead weren’t the only reason I came north.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came forth. Then she tilted her head.

Jaime has memorised every moment of this – he’s played it over and over in his mind so many times since. Why hadn’t she spoken? Had she known?

At the time, he thought she hadn’t. That what he’d said next came as a shock to her. But now, months later, having replayed their conversation a thousand times, his opinion has changed. She’d known but hadn’t allowed herself to think of it.

He thought he would be dragon fodder by morning, so he just said it. “I came north because I thought there might be a chance I could be with you.”

It hadn’t even been solidified in his head until he said it. On his journey to Winterfell he’d kidded himself that he’d wanted to fight beside Brienne against the dead, or put their heads together to come up with battle plans. Or even that with her, he was a better man, more honourable, more trustworthy. He hadn’t really known he was thinking with his cock.

“W-with me?” she stammered.

He looked her right in the eye. “Together.”

“In what capacity?” she looked slightly horrified, which was a bit of a kick in the balls.

“Don’t play coy, wench,” he growled. “You know my meaning.”

“I see. You were hoping I might warm your bed in the absence of your sister?”

“You make it sound unfairly crude.”

“Forgive me, Ser Jaime. I should be grateful that you wished to lay with me, is that it?”

“Don’t be like that! I had thought you may want the same thing. Gods know I’ve … we’ve … “

“We’ve what?”

“At King’s Landing, in the Dragonpit …”

“You were stood by Cersei’s side!”

“Euron Greyjoy stood by Cersei’s side. In spirit. He was the one she had entrusted her plans to. When I saw you … when we looked at each other …”

“You barely spoke to me. Except to defend Cersei’s madness.”

“I regret that.”

Brienne scoffed, turning away with a little stamp of her foot.

“Cersei is mad. I know. I have known a long time – and giving her power has not lessened it. But you have to understand …”

“I understand perfectly.”

He pressed on with his speech. “She was my family – my sister, yes, but my wife too, in all but name. I have known no other love but hers since we were children. Loving another, imagining a life for myself where I was not Cersei’s counterpart, has been immensely difficult.”

“But you’ve done it?” the scepticism burned in her voice. “For me?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

He had never had cause to realise before how terrible he was at telling someone that he loved them. Just how inexperienced his relationship with Cersei had left him.

“Brienne, do I have this wrong? Do you not share my feelings? Do we not have something that goes beyond friendship, or comrades, or bathtime confessions?”

She regarded him for a long, long moment, her eyes distant, her face unmoving.

“Truly, my Lady, I did not mean to insult you by expressing my desire. I put it to you in that way because I am chained to a post facing my imminent demise by dragon. I would have you any way you would have me. As your friend, as your comrade, your confessor, your lover, or even as your husband.”

 “You’re a liar.”

Then suddenly, she kissed him. Her lips were dry, chapped from the cold, but were unfathomably warm and pillow-soft. He caught them with his own, deepening the kiss, drinking her hot tongue and sighing across her cheek.

“Mmmmm …” he had sighed. “You’re warm. Don’t stop.”

And she smiled and kissed him again.

He slid down the post he was chained to and sat on the freezing stone floor, and she had sat with him in the moldy straw and stinking filth, her big arms around him, her big hands on his face, her big, soft mouth pressed against his. Hard. Sweet. Soft. Wet.

There they stayed, for the longest time, and it seemed to Jaime that all of Westeros had vanished beyond the two of them, beyond this sweet kernel of _something_ that he had held for Brienne all this time, buried so deep not even Cersei had touched it.

He felt sad, and sorry, too. He felt it would have been wonderful to have nurtured it, to have been a man apart from Cersei, to have loved a woman who was not insane and who did not make him insane as well.

And it felt lovely, kissing another woman. Kissing not-Cersei, kissing _Brienne,_ was not anywhere near so shocking and repulsive as he’d always thought it would be. In fact, if he was honest, it felt much the _same_.

Except she tasted of Brienne, and smelled of her too – an honest smell of armour and leather and weapons and sweet, clean skin.

Kissing her made his chest hurt – he didn’t ever want it to stop. And then that hurt slid down into the pit of his belly, as if it melted into some rich hot liquid, and he realised that he was feeling desire.

He started breathing faster and the kissing got harder – she squirmed against him, pressing herself against his body at the breast and hip. Her long, dextrous fingers were everywhere, exploring his chest, his shoulders, skirting down the sides of his thighs.

His cock ached – stone-hard and wanting. He remembered worrying he might come in his breeches before she even touched him. Being chained up, arms behind him, unable to so much as embrace her, was a bittersweet torment indeed.

She was bolder than he had anticipated, though. He expected her to demur when it came to touching him intimately, to be too shy to handle his manhood, but suddenly there her hand was, cupping him in her big palm. She’d stroked him without abashment through his breeches, hard enough to make him jerk against his chains and groan.

“Please …” he said, but it was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t need to beg her, didn’t need to be anything, do anything. With Cersei it had always felt as though he’d had to hold his breath, stand absolutely still, be whatever she wanted him to be.

He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about Cersei, but at that point thinking of Cersei was still a reflex for Jaime. He didn’t know how to stop. Didn’t know how to be himself for Brienne.

He gasped as she opened his breeches – her hand moved so fast and so firmly that he was exposed and in her palm before he had fully realised what she had done.

She broke the kiss to look down at his cock in her hand, and strangely, he felt _shy_. It felt so intimate, so explicit – watching Brienne stroke him in the near dark, learning how to do it. She had her angle wrong – his foreskin got slightly pinched between her fingers as she rolled it up and down, but the sting added to the heat of it, and he couldn’t help his hips thrusting into her touch.

She sped up, and he closed his eyes and buried his face in her neck. He remembered the sound of his own breathing, the pulsebeat under her skin.

He felt his pleasure coming, speeding like a wild horse, faster than he knew how to control. “My lady,” he gasped. “I’m – I’ll spend in your hand …”

And she took her hand off him – an agony that made his balls contract in a tight ache. He groaned in disappointment and pain. Then there was a wave of cold air against his fevered skin as she stood up, and for a moment, an awful, awful moment, he thought she had seen sense and was leaving.

But he saw her move in the shadows, her hands pulling at something on her waist and then wiggling her hips. He realised with a gasp that she was removing her breeches!

She folded them carefully and placed them on her boots, and then she stepped over him, legs bathed orange in the torchlight, big and soft and straddling him. He saw her cunt above him, naked – the thick hair glistening slightly. She was _wet_!

Then she knelt down, astride him. The scent of her filled his nose and he was lost – right then he couldn’t have recalled Cersei’s face if he’d tried. It was crude, it was dirty, but he’d never wanted to fuck so much in his life.

He felt her hand grasp his cock and she tried to angle it to get it inside her, clumsily, awkwardly. He thrust blindly and missed, the exquisitely sensitive head sliding torturously through her wetness. That was awful – he needed his arms! He needed to grasp her hips, angle himself, pull her down onto him, bury himself in her …

And then suddenly, she got it right. She drove down at just the right angle, and he was pushed inside her cunt in one, intense, joyous thrust, right to the balls. Too clumsy, too fast by far – she winced in pain and grabbed his shoulders. But he was inside her. Inside Brienne.

He let out a jubilant laugh, and she laughed too – and kissed him.

“Are you all right, my Lady?” he breathed against her lips.

She nodded, but hadn’t answered. She rocked against him experimentally, moving up and then down on him. He thrust up to meet her – as well as he could with his arms and legs in chains – and she felt so _good_. He closed his eyes and groaned into her neck.

Riding north was worth it, he thought. Even if he was going to be roasted alive by a dragon on the morrow. He had this moment, he was with Brienne. He’d told her how he felt, he’d told _himself_.

They built up into a frantic rhythm, his arse and her knees scraping on the frozen floor. Eyes locked on each other’s eyes, panting into each other’s mouths. She was enjoying it, he could tell, the wet of her cunt told the story of her desire right enough – but he needed his hand! Even his clumsy left one, just to touch her, just to show her how good it could be …

But it turned out that the Maid of Tarth had not been quite so innocent as he had thought – as her pleasure built, she slid a hand between their bodies to touch herself. A maid she may have been, but Brienne of Tarth clearly knew about pleasure for quite some time. Her own touch had her writhing … and moaning, and arching onto his cock.

A pink flush spread into her cheeks, and her head fell back on her shoulders – he has memorised every second of this – her mouth fell open. Then she called his name. The last syllable turned into a long, ugly grunt ….

He felt it. He _felt_ it, every ripple and pulse of her muscles, every gasped breath, every jerk of her hips. He met each thrust, his cock aflame, his heart pounding so loud all he could hear was his own blood, his own breath, his own grunts.

“Oh Gods …” he managed. “I’m going to come.”

He pushed with his chained legs, trying to twist his hips to the side. It didn’t work well, but he managed to give himself enough leverage to slip out of her in what he thought was just in time. He shuddered, and moaned, and spilled his seed all over her thighs and the wet heat of her cunt.

There it shone, wet and white and pearlescent, on her skin and on the hair between her legs, as they sat panting in the torchlight. If he hadn’t been chained he would have lifted her to his mouth and licked it all off her. He might have tried to kiss her with it all in his mouth, but somehow he suspected that might just have been a Cersei thing.

Thinking back on it now, his seed had been everywhere. And then she got up to pull her smallclothes and breeches back on without even wiping it off – it was simply been too cold to sit around half naked.

She teased him a little about leaving him unlaced and exposed, but of course she helped him in the end, and they sat together, kissing, leaning their heads together. Kissing some more.

“I won’t let her kill you,” Brienne said. Her voice was strong and fierce.

He sucked a breath between his teeth. “You said it yourself, Brienne. You’re just Lady Sansa’s protector.”

“I’m her protector because of _you_. They know that.”

“They also know that up until a month ago I stood at the head of Cersei’s army. There’s also the trifling problem of me having betrayed and killed Aerys Targaryen. Oh, and let’s not forget I pushed Sansa’s brother from a window, too. Plus my father turned the Boltons against Robb Stark to get me back, thus causing the Red Wedding. Oh and I murdered a Karstark, didn’t I? Or was he a Manderly?”

“That was before. You’re not the man you were.”  
  
“I don’t think they will want to see the subtleties. They have a Lannister in chains, they don’t seem to be looking much beyond that.”

It felt so sad, so wasteful. He’d tried to be honourable and ended up being a fucking idiot in a dungeon.

Beside him, Brienne squared her shoulders. “She’ll have to kill me too.”

“What?” That scared him. A chill went down his spine that had nothing to do with the snow. “I don’t want you to die for me, Brienne.”

“I won’t let them kill you Jaime.”

He realised with a sickening pang that his confession of love, their coupling, had given Brienne the very thing she lived for – a reason to die honourably for someone else. _Fuck_. How could he keep getting this so very wrong?

“Don’t be foolish,” he admonished her. “Throwing your life away for the Kingslayer would be stupid.”

She bristled. “I think that’s for me to decide, don’t you?”

“No! This is one time you should not listen to that ridiculous honourable heart of yours.”

“But we’re together, Jaime. Friends, comrades, lovers, you said. My husband, if I’d have you.”

He looked at the floor. “That doesn’t mean you should die for me, Brienne.”

She got to her feet. “You said that. You _said_ that! You _rode North_ for me!”

“I know! And I meant it. Every word. But look at our situation, I beg you. If you stand up for me, if they know we’ve been lovers ….”

“Do you jest, my Lord?! You’ve just taken my maidenhead!”

“In a dungeon. With my arms chained behind my back. Do you really not see this?”

She started to speak, but no words came out.

He could see it in her face. She was ready to step in front of the dragonfire for him. At the very least, she’d go to Daenerys, throw herself at the Dragon Queen’s mercy and find herself chained up in the next cell before the night was out.

“You’re putting yourself in danger by just being here,” he said. “I won’t say I regretted it, I could never regret it, but Brienne – it is so, so dangerous.”

Her face was awful. Awful. Like she’d taken a punch to the gut. For some reason this is the part he remembers with the most clarity. The shine of her eyes, the twist of her lower lip. The flare of her nostrils. The steam of her shuddering breath.

The worst part was the _recognition_. She thought it was the same thing all over again, he could see it in those betrayed blue eyes. The butt of the joke, the rejected girl. Used. Abused. Shoved aside.

She hadn’t said another word, and she hadn’t given him the chance to, either. She’d grabbed the torch, turned smartly on her heel, and left him in the darkness.

He’d had to bite his lip to stop himself calling after her. Cursed and cursed again.

Now, in his bed, in the Winterfell guest quarters, he curses again. He’d had everything, he’d had Brienne, and he could have had a child too. If only he’d known.

He just has to hope that Tyrion delivers his message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there's not a lot of forward motion to the plot in this one, but thought it was high time we got a bit of smut! I'm sure everyone wanted to hear about dungeon-bang in detail, right? Well, _I_ did ...
> 
> Thanks as always to CaptainTarthister who actually GAVE UP HER BREAK AT WORK to help me with this when I had a "OMG this is so shit and I've lost it" moment. That's above and beyond in the service of fanfic. Many many thanks my dear, you're a true sweetheart.


	4. Brienne II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne confronts the reality of her situation.

Renly is an uncommonly beautiful baby.

Brienne finds herself staring at his little face as she bathes him – his eyes are big and trusting, he has a sweet little rosebud mouth, an adorable crooked nose and his skin is golden and perfect. Just perfect.

He is almost a week old now – a week! A week since the battle, a week since her rescue of the trapped soldiers, a week since she last swung a sword. Her days and nights have been filled with Renly.

And she’s done it. She’s kept him alive – she, Brienne of Tarth, she who no one could ever have described as feminine, as womanly, as motherly in any way, has kept him alive. Not only alive, but fed, clean, changed, bathed – for a whole week.

And Renly is happy. A content baby boy, snuggled to her breast, comforted by her warmth and her smell and _her_. Being near her soothes him! It’s still amazing to her – that this tiny creature, so beautiful and perfect and wonderful in every way, is happy to have her as his mother. He doesn’t find her awkward or mulish or too ugly to love.

She picks him up from the bath and cradles his wet little form against her shoulder, then lays him on the bed to dry him. He gurgles contentedly as she pats him with the soft towel, following her with eyes she isn’t sure are blue or green yet. She gently dresses him in a worn but clean little tunic that Gilly has passed on to her.

Brienne’s breakfast sits untouched on the table – Lady Sansa had to smuggle it into her as the servants think she is still ill. Lady Sansa has been good to her, more than good – no one in the castle save for those who saw her on that fateful night know anything about Renly’s existence.

She sits to eat it now while she feeds Renly, managing her bacon one-handed but unsure how she will tackle the eggs. It is good to have some decent food again – the siege was finally broken yesterday morning, and they were able to bring more supplies in from the villages.

She’s ravenously hungry almost permanently at the moment, just as Gilly had warned her she would be. Renly is a healthy size and it takes a lot of food to sustain them both. Thankfully Lady Sansa has been more than generous in this regard. The plate is heaped.

Just as she figures out how to cut the eggs with the side of her fork, the door to the chambers opens. She expects Sansa, who has promised to return soon, but instead she sees Tyrion Lannister. He pokes his head in, knocking tentatively.

She beckons him inside.

He’s not an infrequent visitor, and he has been very kind. But he often looks troubled. Uncertain.

Brienne supposes she will have to get used to this. Bastards provoke some strange reactions in people – Lady Sansa has warned her on numerous occasions. She and Renly would have to have thick skins.

“Good morning to you, Lady Brienne,” Tyrion says as he closes the door behind him. “How is the Battleborn today?”

“Well, my Lord. Thank you.”

“I am glad to hear it. Might you have a moment to speak?”

She nods, troubled by his troubled face.

He fiddles with a large ring he wears on his stubby fingers. “You will have to forgive me. I have been uncertain whether to raise this with you.”

“Oh?”

He comes further into the room, headed for the table. He takes a goblet and pours from the flagon. Slams it down again with a scoff of disgust when he sees there is only water within. “You too? Is this a conspiracy?”

“I am a nursing mother, my Lord. No alcohol lest it gets to the babe.”

“Oh. Yes. Probably wise.” He takes a seat and puckers his lips.

“What would you speak with me about?”

“My brother.”

Brienne almost chokes on the last piece of her bacon. Manages to cough it out of her throat before he notices. “S-ser Jaime?”

“There’s no delicate way to say this. Your child is his seed, yes?”

She feels the colour drain from her face. “My child is a bastard,” she says, firmly.

“I’ve held enough Lannister babes in my life to know one when I’m looking at him, Lady Brienne.”

This makes her clutch Renly tight against her. _A Lannister babe._ Somehow that’s worse than being a bastard. More frightening.

“He told me how you were – together. In the Winterfell dungeon.”

She feels sick. “He should not have said aught.”

“My brother is not the most chivalrous of men, it’s true. But –“

“Did he also tell you how he forsook me? That once he’d had his pleasure he found excuses to be rid of me and tell me how we had no future?”

Tyrion looks at the table. “No.”

“I was foolish to have believed his honeyed words. I knew he was a snake, but I thought because we had shared so much that I knew him better than most. I trusted him.”

“Brienne –“

“Say no more, Lord Tyrion. I’ve paid the price for my stupidity, have I not?”

“Jaime is your child’s father …”

“No!” she says so loud even Renly jumps. “Renly is _mine_! He’s not Jaime’s, he’s not a Lannister, he belongs to no one but me and his own self. You must not tell Jaime.”

“Oh ...”

The room spins. Brienne has to grab the edge of the table with her free hand, just to steady herself. “You _told_ him already?”

“I am afraid I did.”

“Why?” The word is a devastated, furious breath. “Without asking me, without talking to me?”

“I thought that he deserved to know.”

“That _wasn’t_ your decision to make.”

Tyrion’s gaze has dropped to his very finely crafted boots. To his credit, he looks abashed, and very, very guilty. “You are right. I apologise, Lady Brienne. To you and to – to Renly. To be honest I hadn’t imagined you bore Jaime such ill will.”

“You did not ask!”

“I was misguided. You stood up for him so passionately when Queen Daenerys was deciding his fate. And you still wield his sword, do you not? A Lannister sword.”

She looked at him sullenly. “Your father had Oathkeeper forged from Ned Stark’s sword. I use it to protect the Stark girls.”

“Which was Jaime’s wish, I believe?”

“You don’t think it cuts me in two every time I have looked at that sword since? I believed in Jaime, I thought that it meant something to him. I thought _I_ meant something to him. But he would not …”

She has to stop. There is something in her throat. Something in her eyes. She blinks furiously.

“You loved him.”

“Don’t you mock me.”

He got up. “Why would I mock you, Lady Brienne? Why in all the Seven Hells would I mock you? For loving a man? For being with him?”

“It was a mistake.”

“Was it? I know that you and Jaime have a bond. That you got him through the darkest hours of his life so far. I know that you are the only woman to have turned his head from Cersei in all his forty-five years. I cannot believe that meant nothing to him – I _know_ it did not. He said as much.”

“He – he did?” Brienne fights to keep her voice steady. At her breast, Renly falls away from her nipple, sleepy and sated. She cradles him close and tucks her breast back into her tunic. “I don’t believe you.”

“Have you seen Jaime since the dungeon?”

“No.”

He tilts his head, his face strangely sad for her. “Perhaps you should. When I told him he had sired a son on you he was devastated. Desperate to see you. Desperate for me to tell you how he feels.”

“How does he _feel_?” she spits.

“The same as you. Clearly. Though neither of you seem very good at articulating it. You seem to have spent the best part of a year idiotically pining for each other when you could have been –“

“What? We could have been what? Forgive me, my Lord, perhaps you forget your brother’s position – this is why he did not want me to visit any more. He has been deemed a traitor to the crown. Both crowns – and no doubt Cersei’s as well! The fact that he escaped execution does not make our position any less precarious. Jaime was cruel about it, and unkind, but Gods damn him, he was right. I cannot be the Kingslayer’s whore, nor Renly his bastard. It would condemn us the same as him.”

“But you want to? If you could, you would be with Jaime?”

Brienne’s eyes fill with tears, and this time there is nothing she can do to stop them. She looks away, letting out a breath that sounds dangerously like a sob. “Yes! All right? I would. I may be a fool, and perhaps a whore as well, but Gods help me, I would …”

She cradles Renly’s sleeping form close to her, feeling like she is going to break. How can she have these feelings? How can she have them still? She needs to be stronger than this, she needs to be smarter.

She looks up, and Tyrion is beside her, his big eyes holding hers, sweet and kind and trusting. She sees Jaime in them, she sees Renly. _A Lannister babe._ He takes her hand in both of his and squeezes it tight. “I will help you, Brienne,” he whispers. “I don’t know how just yet, but I swear it, to you and to Jaime and to my nephew, that I will find a way to help you all.”

Just then, the door opens again. This time, not so tentatively. It is Lady Sansa, her red hair a blaze of colour in the dour stone and furs of the room. Tyrion lets go of Brienne’s hand. He takes a seat at the table once more.

Sansa closes the door behind her, then looks at Brienne, concern all over her pretty face.

“Brienne? Are you all right?” she looks almost accusatorially at Tyrion.

“Yes, my Lady,” Brienne tries a smile. She gets up and goes across the room, to the large window which overlooks the central courtyard. She snuggles baby Renly in her arms, tucking her cloak about them both. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “It is just motherly feelings, nothing more. I have certainly been more tearful of late. A lack of sleep, and the changes in my body …”

“I understand,” Sansa returns her smile, though her eyes hold something that looks like pity. “I know you have found your sudden change in lifestyle difficult to bear.”

“It was … well … unexpected,” Brienne admits.

“Any warrior would feel the same. Could you imagine my brother, or the Hound … or gods forbid even Arya if they suddenly became a parent? No one could blame you for finding the adjustment difficult, Brienne.”

Brienne smiles shyly. “As you say, my Lady.”

“I know that your commitment to fighting this war is absolute, and that you are one of our very best warriors.”

“Thank you. You are too kind.”

“It’s no flattery, my brother tells me of your prowess, and you forget I have seen it for myself. Many times.”

Brienne nods, trying to be gracious.  

“I know too that you have been hankering to get back on your feet, to get back to training and the battlefield.”

“I have, my Lady, but I do understand why –“

“I may have a solution for you.”

Brienne blinks. “A solution?”

Sansa puts her hands together and steeples her fingers. “This morning, a sizeable group of refugees was brought in from one of the Northern holdfasts. Among them was a woman and a baby who looks to be less than a week older than your Renly.”

“A potential wet nurse,” says Tyrion from beside the dining table.

“Yes,” says Sansa. “But … more than that, as well.”

“M-more?” Brienne asks. Her voice sounds quite small.

“I saw to these refugees personally, and I took this woman – Mayda her name is – to private chambers in the castle. I have been speaking with her there.”

“And she would – consent to wet nurse for Renly?”

“She would, Brienne. And – her babe is a similar colouring to yours. Fair haired, as is the mother.”

“Oh?” A prickly chill runs the length of Brienne’s backbone. It feels like her battle instincts – like danger. Something makes her take a step backward.

“I have told her of your predicament. Not who you are, of course, but that you are a highborn woman who has been dishonoured and who has given birth to an unwanted bastard.”

“Lady Sansa –“

“She has agreed, in return for a comfortable sum of gold, of course, to take your baby on as her own. As a twin for her own babe.”

“No …”

“She is a pleasant woman. Kindly, an experienced mother. She lost two other children to the army of the dead.”

“I’m sorry …”

“I have also offered her a job in the kitchens here at Winterfell. Your babe would be close by, he would grow up in the castle. You would always know he was well cared for – indeed you could keep an eye on him, contribute to his upbringing in a way.”

“Watching him from afar?”

“Brienne, don’t dismiss it without giving it some thought. We will not be able to hide what happened for much longer. This is your only opportunity.”

“To _rid_ myself of my _son_?”

“To give him a life. A family. Without the burden of his bastardy.”

Brienne opens her mouth, but she can’t make her voice work.

“And you, Brienne. You can go back to _your_ life. The things you have worked for, the duties you have. The oaths you have sworn.”

Brienne’s eyes drift back to Oathkeeper, resting in its scabbard against the wall. It has not been unsheathed in a week. Not cleaned, nor sharpened. She sees it, though, clear as day, how the colours of the Valyrian steel glint in the sunlight. The way blood runs down it, the sound it makes as it cleaves through the air. The way it feels in her hand – like it belongs there. Like destiny and purpose and strength.

But every time she sees the sword, she also sees Jaime. His piercing green eyes, holding hers as he handed it to her. The sound of his voice when he’d told her to keep it. It was hers. It would _always_ be hers. Then, too, years later, the hot press of his lips against hers, and the taste of his tongue. The sweet bite of pain as she had given him her maidenhead.

Jaime’s eyes are Renly’s eyes, she realises. The newness, the fascination. Their eyes hold love Brienne has never known, something precious, something unconditional. How can she pass that to someone else, to watch her son grow to love another woman as he loves her now?

She shakes her head. Lady Sansa’s shoulders sag.

“I will raise my son myself,” she says. Back straight. Neck tall, head proud.

“Brienne,” Sansa implores.

“You cannot change my mind on this, my Lady. I thank you for your efforts, and this Mayda for her generous offer, but Renly is my son, and he belongs with me.”

Lady Sansa sighs. Then lifts her chin and meets Brienne’s eyes. Something strong, but also something stone. “Then I release you from your vow,” she says.

“My – my vow?”

“Your oath to my mother. And to me. I release you from your service.”

For a moment, Brienne can’t find her words. She gapes at Sansa, her knees weak beneath her. “W-why?” she manages to stammer.

“I don’t wish to. Far from it. Your loyalty has been unquestioning, your service unparalleled. But I am the Lady of Winterfell. The presence of a bastard child within my household would be an insult to anyone I hosted, anyone who visited.”

Tyrion gasped. “Lady Sansa, your own brother …”

“My brother would be the first to tell you what a miserable life it is to be a bastard in a noble house. It is a kindness I do you, Lady Brienne, I swear. And to your child.”

Brienne can’t speak. She clutches Renly to her breast. She feels sick. Hollow. Shocked to her core.

Tyrion steps forward. “Are you ejecting her from Winterfell? Where is she supposed to go?”

“Lady Brienne has a home, Lord Tyrion. She has a father. On Tarth.”

“Tarth? It’s in the Stormlands! In case you had forgotten, it’s the middle of winter, and the dead are rising from their graves. You’re expecting her to travel all those leagues, alone with a newborn babe?”

Brienne steps forward. “There are still ships, my Lord,” she says. Her voice surprisingly strong. “It is very kind of you to be concerned, but I can look after myself.”

“No,” says Tyrion. “No! This madness has gone on long enough!”

Sansa draws herself to her full height and fixes Tyrion with an icy glare. He holds up a hand to silence her.

“No. You just spoke the truth of it, Lady Sansa. Brienne is true, and honourable, and has offered you nothing but loyal service. She is also one of our best warriors. And you want to expel her from our ranks because she does not wish to give up her _child_? Shame on you – the sheer stupidity of that is why we don’t deserve to win this war right now.”

“Lord Tyrion, may I remind you that you are a guest here?”

“Do you not see that, Lady Sansa? That we are in a fight for our very survival, and you are worried about insulting _visitors_?”

“The child is a bastard. I am not saying this to be cruel – “

“And if he’s not a bastard? If he has a father, a noble father, one who is willing to marry Lady Brienne and have the child legitimised by royal decree?”

Brienne’s heart stops. “No!” she cries. Her voice is high and terrified. “Lord Tyrion … no! Please, I beg you!”

“Brienne, this is madness. Total madness. I can’t let this happen. Did I not promise I would find a way to help you?”

“Not like this …”

Lady Sansa looks sceptical in the extreme. “Who is this nobleman? Who is the father of Brienne’s child?”

“Can’t you see it, Lady Sansa? Have you not even looked at the Battleborn? It’s quite plain on his face – the boy’s a Lannister!”

Brienne groans. Turns away.

Lady Sansa gasps. “A – a Lannister?”

“Yes,” Tyrion chuckles. “That’s shocked you, hasn’t it. He’s mine, if you must know. I’m little Renly’s father.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay ... I know ... Sansa was _mean_. I feel bad for assassinating her character like this and having her be the villain of the chapter. I apologise to Sansa fans unreservedly and I promise I don't really hate the Starks or anything.
> 
> The usual thanks to the incomparable CaptainTarthister for the handholds and the guidance and the never-ending enthusiasm for where I take this. You are a true star and without you this would be rotting in a dank corner of my twisted brain. Thank you so much!


	5. Tyrion II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion and Brienne take a stand.

Brienne sits down on the bed, her face as pale as he has ever seen it. She looks as though she might be sick.

Not exactly the reaction Tyrion had hoped for from a prospective bride.

He keeps his eyes on Sansa, though. Imploring her to believe him. “It was just the once,” he says. Trying to sound ashamed. “It was … not long after my brother was captured. We got together, to discuss how we could plead for his life in front of Her Grace. We talked a lot. We drank a lot. It happened.”

He hears Brienne groan.

Sansa turns to her. “Is this true, Brienne? Lord Tyrion is the father of your child?”

Brienne doesn’t answer.

Tyrion begs her with his eyes from behind Sansa. Mouths _trust me_.

Brienne still doesn’t answer. Stares dumbly at the two of them, her mouth open.

“Come now, Lady Brienne,” he laughs, trying to keep things going. “We made an odd couple, tis true, and truly it was not my finest performance, but it’s a little difficult to pleasure a woman when you’re eye-level with her belly button!”

“Y-yes!” she stammers suddenly. Much, he thinks, so that he will shut up. “Lord Tyrion speaks the truth.”

Tyrion lets out a breath. For her sake. For Jaime’s. Luckily, she sounds suitably wretched, suitably reluctant to reveal the truth. He suspects the former Maid of Tarth is not much of an actress.

Sansa is dumbstruck. She looks from Brienne to Tyrion, Tyrion to Brienne. Back again.

“I did not mean to dishonour Lady Brienne,” he continues, trying to look contrite. “Certainly I had no idea I had gotten a child on her.”

“It was foolhardy, Lord Tyrion,” Sansa says at last. “You have cost us one of our best warriors, right when we needed her most.”

He has to bite his tongue at that, thinking of Jaime, wasted in his room. Of how Sansa had been willing to pack Brienne and the Battleborn off on a boat not moments ago.

 “I apologise,” he says, though the words burn his mouth. “But naturally, I am willing to make things right. This was what we were discussing when you arrived, Lady Sansa.”

“You will marry Lady Brienne?” asks Sansa.

“If she will have me. And, of course, if it means she and her – _our_ child can stay here in your service.”

“Jon will have to issue a royal decree …”

“I am certain that won’t be a problem? After _all_ Lady Brienne has done in service of his family.”

Sansa nods. “I will ask him.”

Tyrion bows, though it hurts him to do so. “Thank you.” He turns to Brienne, who looks like she has aged ten years in the last few minutes. “My Lady?”

She looks at him with bewildered blue eyes. Both hands clutching at her sleeping baby. He goes to her and prises her hand from Renly, taking it in both of his. It feels cold and bloodless and looks absurd, her long strong fingers held by his small ones, but he kneels in front of her nonetheless.

“Would you consent to be my wife?”

She closes her eyes, but she nods. The smallest nod.

“Thank you,” he says, trying to put everything, all the sorrow, all the anger, all the injustice of this moment into his voice. Trying to let her know his intentions. He hopes she understands. “For trusting me. I hope I can make you very happy.”

Brienne says nothing. He stands again, brushing his knees and forcing a smile for Sansa’s sake.

“Excellent,” he says. “Let’s get the marriage arranged as soon as we can, shall we? If the Septon still lives?”

“He does,” Sansa says.

“Marvellous!” His voice sounds all but hysterical. “Let’s start planning, then.”

Sansa nods. “I will arrange to have Lady Brienne’s things brought to your chambers, Lord Tyrion. The babe’s, too. You can have hers until you are wed.”

“My – my chambers?” He hadn’t thought of that. They would need to share chambers. He would need to share chambers with a baby.

“I would have thought Brienne’s would be too small to share? I doubt you could fit all your books in there.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he says, quickly covering his stumble. “It would make sense to share the bigger space.”

“I will make the arrangements.”

“Wonderful. My thanks, Lady Sansa. I will fetch some wine … to celebrate. There seems to be a distinct lack around here these days.”

“You’re in luck, my Lord. A cask was brought to the kitchens this morning, it came in with the refugees.”

He leaves with not a single word more, and all but runs to the kitchens.

Sure enough, there it is – a great cask full of a very average Dornish wine. He fills a carafe, and his wineskin for good measure. Drinks half of it on his way back to Lady Sansa’s chambers.

She has left by the time he gets back there, no doubt to make the promised arrangement for the forthcoming nuptials.

Brienne sits on the bed, Renly suckling noisily and hungrily from her breast. Her eyes are red, and she looks thoroughly miserable.

He offers her a sad smile and closes the door behind him. “I found the wine.”

She says nothing. Strokes Renly’s blond hair with gentle fingers and lets out a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he says, coming over to the edge of the large bed. “I promised you a plan. I thought I would have more time to come up with something. That was rather born of desperation.”

She shrugs. “It is I who should apologise, my Lord,” she says at last. “I owe you my thanks. I can stay. I can keep my child. You have made a terrific sacrifice to help me.”

“It wasn’t just for you,” he says. “It was for Jaime, too.”

“Jaime …” she breathes. The name a sigh of sadness and longing.

“My brother deserves his chance at happiness, at love. You are a lovely woman, I believe he has a good chance to be happy with you.”

She looks up, almost sharply, and their eyes meet for a long, long time. “I would like that,” she whispers.

“Then we will make it happen,” he promises. “When the war is over, we will all go back to Casterly Rock. You, me, Jaime and Renly. And I promise, we will sort it all out. You and I will get our marriage annulled, you can marry Jaime, and we can tell everyone the truth.”

She nods.

“It’s messy, I grant you. But hey – we’re the Lannisters, everyone is used to messy. It won’t be the first time Jaime is both a father and an uncle to the same child!”

Brienne doesn’t laugh. Tyrion drinks.

Renly drops sleepily off her nipple, a trail of milk running down his plump little cheek. She wipes it and kisses his little nose. Jaime’s nose.

“The Starks are idiots,” he says darkly.

“Lord Tyrion …”

“Tis true. Let’s not forget how many of them my father played to their graves. Almost all of them.”

Brienne looks away. “They are an honourable family.”

“To a fault, as I think Lady Sansa just demonstrated.”

“Lady Sansa has been through a lot, mostly at your sister’s hand. It’s made her … hard. Harder than she was.”

“I know.”

“A bastard is a curse – I believe in her heart she thought to spare me of that curse. And Renly. She thought it was a kindness.”

He drinks again.

“A dwarf is a curse too – but only because others make it so. We were supposed to be changing things, breaking the wheel, weren’t we?”

“Lady Sansa has angered you greatly, has she not, my Lord?”

“She has _offended_ me, Brienne. As has her moron of a brother. You and Jaime should be out there now on that battlefield, fighting side by side with your Valyrian steel swords in your hands. And at night you should be fucking like rabbits, making lots and lots of little Renlys to repopulate Westeros once the war is over. That’s the sensible thing to do, not let meaningless concepts of _honour_ get in the way of our survival.”

“Fuck loyalty …” she whispers. Her eyes are very far away.

Tyrion drinks again. “Fuck loyalty indeed! Fuck the wheel, fuck everything. Come on …”

He gets to his feet and hold out his hand to her. She stares at it.

“What?” she asks.

“We’re going out.”

“Where?”

“Out. Out of this room, out of this cloak of shame. We’re going to let people see you, we’re going to let people see the Battleborn.”

Her mouth drops open.

“Why not? He’s just a baby. Everyone loves a baby!”

She hesitates. “But he’s a bastard.”

“Do you trust me, Brienne?”

She nods. “I do.”

“Good. That’s helpful for a husband and wife. Now come on.”

Impossibly, improbably, she takes his hand and gets to her feet.

At her full height, she cuts an imposing figure, even more so with her surly expression. He stands back to regard her with a thoughtful eye.

“Where’s your armour, my Lady?”

She blinks. “In my chambers. I haven’t worn it since …”

“I’ll fetch it. You should wear it.”

“For a walk around the castle?”

“Yes,” he says. “Your sword, too.”

She looks puzzled, but she nods.

It takes him two trips to fetch her armour – the breastplate alone is almost as big as he is. He’s not much good as a squire either– he has to stand on a chair to help her fasten straps she can’t reach alone.

Renly fusses – he isn’t too keen on being held close to the cold metal, but she wraps him tightly in a blanket and holds him close to her neck so he can still smell her scent, and he settles.

Tyrion brings her Oathkeeper, its beautiful golden pommel gleaming in the winter sun. Holding it gives him chills – it looks like his childhood, it looks like Casterly Rock. Like his father’s cold eyes, disapproving and disgusted. This sword could not be more Tywin, it could not be more Lannister.

Brienne straps it to her hip, and suddenly he’s proud of Jaime – how royally he shafted Tywin’s legacy by giving this to her. He wonders if he did it out of spite or if he just gave it to her because he loves her.

She looks perfect. Powerful. Regal. The mother of the Battleborn. He opens the door for her, and she walks out, her head high.

In the corridor, two servants. Chatting to each other, laughing amiably about some soldier one of them has fucked. They jump when they see Brienne.

“Milady!” says the younger one of the two. “How are you feeling?”

Brienne stumbles. “B-better. Thank you.”

Tyrion steps in. “In truth, my good women, Lady Tarth was more than just ill. She was in childbed.”

“In childbed!” Their eyes go immediately to Renly, noticing him for the first time. “Oh my goodness!”

“He is a beauty, is he not?” says Tyrion.

The women come closer, and tentatively, Brienne holds Renly out for them to see. “Ohhhh,” they sigh. “Look at his little hands!”

Tyrion watches as a smile creeps onto Brienne’s face. The two women continue to fuss over Renly.

“You forget how small they are,” says the older one. “Enjoy every moment, milady. It doesn’t last long!”

“I – I will,” Brienne stammers.

The two ladies carry on their duties, but not before waving goodbye to the baby, speaking to him in silly high-pitched voices and pinching his little cheeks. As they disappear down the corridor, Brienne looks after them in wonder.

“Everyone loves a baby,” says Tyrion.

And he’s right. She gathers quite a crowd in the Main Hall. People leave their meals to come and have a look at the Battleborn, to touch his soft skin, to marvel at his tiny toes and fingers. Little girls want to hold him, mothers talk wistfully about their own babes, giving Brienne advice. People run back to their chambers to dig out old clothes, old toys. Tyrion gathers them gratefully, offering profuse thanks for every one.

In the courtyard, the Wildlings sing the Battleborn a song – a traditional Freefolk lullaby that sounds more like it was meant to stir the blood of warriors than hush a babe to sleep. Tormund Giantsbane pours his ale across the scalp of Renly’s head, to ensure he grows to be a fearsome fighter. He laughs uproariously at the notion of Tyrion being the babe’s father, laughs until he almost shits himself, which makes Brienne blush to her boots, but Tyrion laughs along.

They go up on the battlements, and Brienne is cheered by men she’s fought with, men whose lives she’s saved. Men she has commanded in battle. She’s praised and told that Renly will be an incredible fighter, with her as a mother. She can hardly take two steps without getting a clap on the back.

She’s pink in the cheeks and wearing a broad grin by the time they get to the west side of the castle. Most of the archers there are resting, making arrows, repairing their bows, but they all get up when they see Brienne.

She has gathered quite a number of followers now, mostly solders wanting to touch the Battleborn for luck, or press his little hands to their armour. Luckily, he’s still sound asleep.

Tyrion looks up at the castle, trying to judge. Then stops by the wall, thinking he has found the perfect place. He grabs one of the crates the archers were using at a seat, and clambers onto it, pulling Brienne and Renly to his side. Even on the crate he only reaches her shoulder.

“Gentlemen!” he shouts, to get everyone’s attention. Then “My Lords!” which makes everyone laugh.

He has their full attention now. “One week ago, a battle raged outside these very walls. Men fought. Men died. Men sacrificed everything to stop the dead from killing us all. You all know – you were these men. And among you, one woman. One woman who fought fiercely, and bravely, and nobly as your comrade. Brienne of Tarth!”

This elicits a cheer. Tyrion takes the opportunity to glance up at the castle. Nothing yet. He gets louder.

“That night, she bore us all a child.”

A ripple of ribald laughter goes through the crowd, and never one to pass up an opportunity, Tyrion tilts his head. “Well, all right, mostly _me_. But he came into this world amid the shouts and screams of battle. He drew his first breaths as so many of our brothers drew the last of theirs. He is a symbol of their suffering, and of their sacrifice. They died so that babes like him might have the chance to live. I implore you - look on this child, look on him every day and remember them! I give you – RENLY BATTLEBORN!”

He shouts the last at the top of his lungs, and it stirs the men to take up his cry. Shouting, waving weapons, chanting “RENLY! RENLY!” and “BATTLEBORN!”

Surely. Surely _now_ …

He steals a glance once again at the castle, up at the tiny window that overlooks the west battlement. There – he’s there! Nothing more than a haunted pale face at the glass, but he’s there. He’s heard the commotion and come to see what’s going on.

Jaime.

Tyrion nudges Brienne, catches her gaze. Nods urgently in the direction of the window. He looks away, but feels her gasp. It goes right through her body.

Around them, the clamouring grows louder, louder still.

He allows himself to look – her face is naked – raw emotion. Mouth open, eyes huge, staring up at Jaime.

Jaime gazes back at her, looking, strangely, like he is crying.

She turns her body and opens her cloak a little more. Angles Renly so Jaime can see him. Jaime presses his hand against the glass, as if he could reach down and touch them, pull them to him, never let them go.

Then, suddenly, a shadow envelops them all. A vast shadow, inky black and impossibly huge. There is a rush of cold air, the unmistakable sound of wingbeats.

They all look up – Jaime too from his distant window. Drogon, enormous, flies overhead, Daenerys Targaryen on his back.

She lands atop the broken tower, the one where Jaime had flung Bran Stark from the window all those years ago.

Drogon roars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many thanks are of course owed to CaptainTarthister, who keeps me going with her excitement over this. Thanks so much for the endless chats and bolstering and the suggestions and the squeeing over the plot directions! Your help is something I can never say thank you enough for.


	6. Jaime II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime finds out about recent events.

“You’re _marrying_ her? You’re fucking marrying her?”

Never mind Bran Stark, Jaime has the overwhelming urge to push his brother out of the window right now. Now he understands why Tyrion hasn’t visited him for several weeks.

Tyrion must be able to read it on his face, because he holds up his hands and backs away. “I know, I’m a shit. But I didn’t mean to be a shit, I swear. And I’m actually _not_ being a shit. Sansa Stark was going to send Brienne home.”

“Home?”

“Back to Tarth.”

This stops Jaime in his tracks. “What?”

“The Lady of Winterfell could not bear the shame of having a bastard in her household.”

Jaime wrinkles his brow. “There’s a war to fight, isn’t there? Brienne’s an unusually accomplished warrior. And isn’t the King in the North himself a bastard? Raised at Winterfell?”

“Since when have the honourable Starks made sense? I’m sorry, Jaime. I had nigh on ten seconds to think of a solution, and this was what I came up with. I told Sansa I fathered the babe, and I asked for Brienne’s hand in marriage.”

Jaime has to sit down. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck!”

Tyrion shushes him. Then realises what a bad idea that is. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“They bought that? How in the Seven Hells did they think it even happened? You’d have to stand on a chair to even do her doggie style.”

That seems to wound Tyrion’s pride a little. “You managed it in chains.”

Jaime sinks back into the chair, his face in his hands. “I’m never destined to be a father, am I? Four children and I have to watch them raised by other men.”

“No. _No_ , Jaime. It will not be that way. Truly.”

“Of course it will. Uncle Jaime, having to stay a respectful distance, having to make sure I don’t bond with them too much, don’t smile too much at them, don’t get to know them in case it raises suspicion. It’s _always_ that way.”

“No. I promised Brienne, and I’m promising you. When the war is over, when we get back to Casterly Rock, we will sort it all out. The marriage will be annulled, you can marry her yourself and everyone can know you’re the Battleborn’s sire.”

“When the war’s over? Be realistic, Tyrion. When’s that going to be? Five, ten years? He may even be a man grown. And that’s _if_ they let me go back to Casterly Rock when the fighting’s done.”

Tyrion bites his lip. Looks at the floor. He doesn’t have an answer for that, Jaime realises.

“Fuck,” he says again.

“Listen,” says Tyrion. “Don’t think about the long term. I’ll sort it. Little Renly will never know me as his father, I promise.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But hold faith, Jaime. I won’t let you down. The important thing is that they are here, they are safe, and _she wants to be with you_.”

Jaime closes his eyes. Those are the very sweetest words in the common tongue, he has to admit. He would not have dared to dream them just a few weeks ago. He feels the tears coming again, and has to blink them away. This is becoming an all-too-frequent occurrence. What in the world is happening to him?

If he sees that Jaime is crying, Tyrion doesn’t mention it. He pats his stump. “I do have something for you to look forward to in the short term, however.”

“What?”

“Once we are married, my Lady wife and I will be able to visit my brother together, won’t we. And we can take our son to meet him, too.”

Jaime gasps. Tyrion smiles. “You don’t think that will invite suspicion?”

“I don’t think they care. I’m pretty sure Sansa has a good idea I’m not really Renly’s father, I’ve barely even had an interaction with Brienne before the babe. But I’ve claimed him, I’ve claimed her, and propriety has resumed. It’s all that matters.”

“When? When will you marry?”

Tyrion’s smile turns to a grimace. “This afternoon.” So he _has_ waited a long time to tell his brother, Jaime realises. He must have been putting it off because he feared Jaime’s reaction. “They are hastily stitching a very crude lion onto a curtain for me as we speak.”

“ _How_ are you going to get it around her shoulders? I mean, even if she kneels down …”

“Jaime …”

But Jaime looks away. He feels sick.

“You know that I’ll treat her honourably. You know I won’t touch her …”

Jaime bursts out laughing, but it’s a bitter laugh. A mocking one. “If there was one thing I wasn’t worried about, Tyrion, it was you raping Brienne.”

“You make a good point.”

But now Jaime’s mood is sour. “Maybe you _should_ fuck her for me. Why not? I think you’d like her.”

“Jaime …”

Jaime doesn’t want to hear it. “You’ve seen her fight? Mmm … that’s how she fucks. She took me totally by surprise – on both counts! Graceless, but good. So good.”

Tyrion makes a face and a noise of disgust. “I did not need to know the details, thank you.”

“Grunts like a sow when she comes though,” Jaime spits.

“Come on … I have to look the woman in the eye later.”

“Just want you to know what you’re marrying.”

Tyrion regards him with a strange look. “You always were a jealous man, Jaime. I think Cersei encouraged it, but I can’t see Brienne being too fond.”

Jaime sighs. “Don’t mind me. I’ve had naught to do but sit here growing bitter for the best part of a year.”

“I know. And I’m truly sorry.”

But Jaime can’t do this. He can’t be gracious, not today. He needs to not see Tyrion for a while. He needs to be alone. He stands up, and beckons his brother to the door.

“Well, enjoy my wedding, Tyrion. Enjoy my wife and son, too.”

“Don’t be like that, Jaime,” he tries to reach out, but Jaime turns away.

“Just go,” he says.

Tyrion leaves, with a deep, sad sigh.

After he goes, Jaime has discovered he’s left him a gift. It’s a box, a gold one, the top engraved with a lion’s head. Jaime recognises it at once – it was his. He, Cersei and Tyrion had been given identical ones when they were babies, possibly by their Uncle Kevan? Or was it Uncle Tyg? He does not recall.

Tyrion must have found them when the Unsullied took Casterly Rock.

He recalls that they had used them as children to pass secret messages onto one another. The velvet-lined base would lift up, and there was a small space for messages and gifts and sweets. Later, he and Cersei had used the boxes to arrange trysts, swapping them over and checking for notes.

He opens the box. Inside is a couple of cakes – a plausible gift. He takes them out and puts them on the table for later.

It takes him a moment to remember how the false bottom works – he seems to recall pressing it in a certain place? It’s awkward anyway with his left hand, but just as he’s about to give up and hit it with something heavy, he gets it right. The bottom pops off and the secret compartment is revealed.

There’s no note. Just two, small, locks of hair, bound with thread. He picks them up. One he recognises immediately – it’s bright blonde, slightly ratty. The other is soft, downy, more golden in colour.

His heart stops. He has to bite his lip hard to stop himself dissolving into another bout of tears. He clutches the locks of hair hard in his hand, holding his fist tight against his heart.

Suddenly, he feels like shit for how he treated Tyrion. None of this is his little brother’s fault. It was a massive risk bringing this box to him, even just because of the cakes. He vows to offer his brother a heartfelt apology.

Before he can begin to compose this apology, he hears voices outside his door. He scrambles to bundle the two locks of hair back in the box, and kicks the box under a chair.

The door opens, and Jaime’s mouth drops open.

Daenerys Targaryen.

She’s flanked by two tall, imposing Dothraki, fur-clad and expressionless. Holding those curved swords, the _arakhs_. Unsheathed, in their hands, as if they are ready to use them on him at any moment. Two more are outside the door, he notices, and a couple of Unsullied too. She’s trying to be intimidating. He’s surprised she hasn’t squeezed a dragon up the corridor as well.

She’s smaller than he remembers – perhaps because the last time he had seen her he was on his knees in front of her, still in chains.

She regards him with cool eyes, and a small wrinkle between her brows. She looks around his room with a measure of distaste. She turns that look on Jaime himself. Up and down, then back up to his eyes again.

“Your Grace,” he says, with a slight incline of his head. “This is something of a surprise. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not dressed for a royal visit.”

“You’re barely dressed _at all_ ,” she says, her eyes lingering just a little bit too long on his naked arms. His unbuttoned tunic.

“I like to keep myself in shape – it gets a little warm in here when I exercise.”

“Mmm,” she hums. A small smile plays at the corner of her perfect lips. “I said I would visit you, did I not, Ser Jaime?” she says. “I haven’t, and it’s been almost half a year. I hope you will forgive me?”

Jaime says nothing. He’s been around Cersei long enough to know when a question is a trap. Always better to keep his stupid mouth shut.

“Your brother is getting married today.”

“So he tells me.”

“To that tall woman.”

“Her name is Brienne of Tarth,” he says. He does like people to use her name.

“Brienne of Tarth,” she echoes, enunciating every syllable. She takes a step closer to Jaime. “The baby she’s been parading around the castle – this “Battleborn” – he’s your bastard, isn’t he.”

Jaime looks at her eyes. They are unflinching. There’s no point denying it - she knows. She _knows_.

“That’s a considerable problem,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because _you’re_ a problem, Ser Jaime Lannister. Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. Man Without Honour. That’s what they call you, isn’t it?”

“Unfairly, for the most part,” he shrugs.

“But I can’t afford to take your word on that, can I.”

“Though you can take Tyrion’s word? On a great many things – he is your Hand. And yet he is no less a Lannister than I.”

“Tyrion has not pushed children from towers. He has not lain with his own sister, nor fathered false kings. He did not stab my father in the back when he had sworn a sacred oath to protect him.”

“He would have done. Had he been a Kingsguard. Had he borne witness to your father’s acts. As would you, or anyone else who had found themselves in my position on that day.”

She stares at him, her gaze unflinching. Unblinking.

“But you won’t be taking my word on that either, will you.”

 “Your brother is my Hand,” she says eventually. “He came to me, having left everything from his former life behind him. His name, his title, his family. He threw himself at my mercy, offered his services because he believed in me above all else.”

“So I hear.”

“But I leave the castle for a few weeks and come back to find he has forgotten all of that. That instead, he is conspiring on your behalf once more.”

“ _Conspiring_ may be a little strong.”

“What would you call it?”

“I’d call it helping his nephew. Who is an innocent babe.”

“He is _your_ son.”

“Hardly his fault. I had a single, meaningless fumble with his mother – he’s no more to me than a squirt of seed in a willing cunt. I can’t claim to be any more involved than that.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Are you always so vulgar?”

“It’s one of my more charming attributes.”

“Hmmm.”

 “Tyrion hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Oh he _has_. He’s been very, very _clever_.”

Jaime doesn’t understand.

“That baby – he’s turned him into a _symbol_. The men, the soldiers, the commonfolk of Winterfell, they look at your spawn as a good luck charm. The _Battleborn_. They see him in the arms of his warrior mother, all bedecked in her plate and Valyrian steel, and he gives them hope. He _inspires_ them. A baby!”

Jaime sees her face - the contempt, the disgust, and it scares him.

She continues. “Soldiers rush out to get their armour touched by this babe, the Wildlings rub his head for good luck. There’s a thriving black market for locks of the Battleborn’s hair, for his nail clippings, for pieces of his clothing, even for his shit!”

Jaime lets out a bark of laughter. Tyrion _is_ clever. Very, very clever indeed.

“And he’s _your_ child!”

“So if you were to send him away or execute him …” he says.

“Well, I’d be the Mad Queen, wouldn’t I.”

She steeples her fingers. Looks at the floor.

“The babe does you no harm, Your Grace. Truly. His mother and I … we had a foolish moment together, a weakness. We have not seen each other since. Tyrion has always been a devoted uncle, and he did not want to see the boy punished for his bastardy. Sansa Stark wanted to send Brienne home rather than have shame brought upon Winterfell. That is all.”

“The problem I have,” she says after a moment. “Is that baby is Cersei’s nephew. And if you did truly lay with your sister as everyone says, Kingslayer, he’s brother to two former kings. That makes his claim to the Iron Throne … rather impressive.”

Jaime swallows.

“So now Tyrion has rallied a huge following for him, before he’s so much as taken his first steps. It’s not hard to imagine in a few years, a dissident faction, discontented with me on the Iron Throne for whatever petty reasons, might look to your son as a possible replacement. A rallying point.”

“Brienne has no interest in that. And neither does Tyrion. You have to …”

“Believe you? I don’t. I can’t. You’re already lying to me. You say your tryst was meaningless, but that’s plainly a lie. You couldn’t take your eyes off each other at the Dragonpit, and she begged piteously for your life when you were captured. You clearly have very strong feelings for one another.”

“Then what? What?! If you can’t execute us, nor exile us - what will Your Grace decide to do?”

She lifts her chin and takes another step closer to him. “I’ve decided I’m going to give you what you want, Kingslayer.”

“And what is it that you think I want?”

“Redemption, yes? And her. I think, for you, the two may go together.”

Jaime is struck dumb.

The Dragon Queen turns away, and takes a bundle, wrapped in linen, from the Unsullied outside the door. She passes it to Jaime.

“Open it,” she commands.

He does. He gasps. It’s Widow’s Wail. It’s his golden hand.

“You want to fight in my army? Fight by her side? This is why you came North, isn’t it? This is what you tried to tell me at your trial?”

“It is, yes.”

“Good. Then you shall have your opportunity.”

Jaime gasps. “Do you jest?”

“I do not.”

“Why? Why now?”

The Dragon Queen sighs. “I have been away from the castle for some weeks now. I left because there were troubling messages from the South.”

“Oh?”

“It turns out they were quite accurate. Your sister marches up the Kingsroad with a mercenary army some twenty thousand strong.”

“The Golden Company,” he says.

“You didn’t think to tell us?”

He pulls a face. “Wasn’t I your enemy?”

She licks her lips. “I’ve taken cities. Jon Snow has fought Wildlings, and the dead. We’ve defended the castle. But this is different. I need to know how to defeat your sister. What she will do, how she will think.”

A note of alarm sounds in the back of Jaime’s mind. Predicting what Cersei would do was always hit-and-miss, to say the least. And it wasn’t like she would be commanding the army herself – her instructions to whatever poor fool had the job were likely to be little more than “Take Winterfell”. She knew nothing of the intricacies of battle herself, no matter how much she liked to think she had studied at their father’s side.

“I think,” says Daenerys, “that you will probably have a better insight than most.”

He shrugs. “And if, after a year of captivity, I no longer feel disposed towards helping you?”

“Then my dragons will break their fast with you on the morrow, my Lord. And possibly Tyrion as well.”

“Doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice, does it.”

“I’d say not.”

He looks at the floor, then lifts his eyes to meet hers. “I want to be able to see my son. And Brienne.”

“I think you can do better than that.”

“How so?”

“Well, if you accept this, if you agree to help, you are no longer a prisoner. There’s nothing to stop you going down to the Sept, taking the cloak from your brother, and marrying Brienne of Tarth yourself. If you wish.”

Jaime doesn’t understand. He looks at her through narrowed eyes, wondering if he’s dreaming. If he’s fallen and hit his head and is hallucinating. If there’s some bite to this, somewhere, somewhere.

But she says no more. She turns, her fur-lined cape billowing behind her like a shroud, and her elaborately-braided hair swinging against it.

True to her word, she leaves the door open behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Supreme thanks to CaptainTarthister (again) for going through this for me TWICE and doing a very kind handhold when I got a bit wobbly over Daenerys!
> 
> Seriously, without her, this would not even be a thing, so please give her a MASSIVE round of applause. She thoroughly deserves it.


	7. Brienne III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime wrestles with what to do next.

They have brought an enormous looking glass into Tyrion’s chambers so that Brienne can get ready for her wedding, but it hasn’t helped.

She sits on the foot of the big canopy bed – the one she will be expected to share with her Lord husband tonight – looking at herself in the polished silver. She’s dressed in her maiden’s cloak and her wedding gown, the bodice unlaced so she can feed Renly so he will sleep through the ceremony.

The gown looks absurd – she thinks even Sansa regrets finding it for her now. It’s made of a pale grey silk, very fine quality, and it’s made for a large woman, but one who is portly rather than tall. The sleeves are meant to be full length, but they end mid-forearm, and the skirt only reaches partway down her calves. The rest of it is voluminous, despite her lacing it as tightly as it will go.

Her maiden’s cloak is the wrong colours too – someone has merely stitched moons and starbursts onto a piece of teal blue blanket. And in the wrong order – her father would have been quite upset to see it.

One of Sansa’s handmaids made an attempt to do her hair earlier in the morning, but they didn’t have a lot to work with, so she is stuck with a couple of braids that were meant to frame her face but don’t quite meet behind her head. She also has a face covered in make-up that she was too polite to refuse but doesn’t suit her one bit.

It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. All of this is for show. None of it means anything. When she looks down at Renly’s plump, dozing form, she knows it is worth it. If nothing else, it will give Tyrion a laugh.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock at her door. Probably Sansa, she thinks, though she’s a little early. It’s not quite time to head down to the Sept.

There, Podrick will be waiting, waiting to give her away in the absence of her father.

She gets up awkwardly, holding a still-feeding Renly in one arm as she pulls open the door.

“I won’t be a moment, my Lady …” and then she stops. Freezes.

It’s Jaime.

Jaime.

Jaime, looking up at her, leaning with one arm on the door frame, trying to look casual. Trying to be his cocky self. But his lip is trembling and his eyes are full.

They don’t move. They don’t breathe.

Brienne feels her mouth fall open, but every other part of her is numb. Shocked.

Suddenly, she recovers her senses. Grabs his arm, yanks him into the room. Slams the door shut behind him.

“Jaime?” she says. As if it might not be him. As if she’s had a visit from an apparition.

He nods. And then he kisses her.

It’s fierce, it’s powerful. The most intense thing she’s ever felt in her life. It lasts only a few seconds, but she almost collapses from the force of it.

He picks Renly from her arms to hold him. Gazes at him. Plants a soft kiss on his little head.

“Oh he’s so beautiful.”

“Jaime – how? Have you escaped?”

“Daenerys Targaryen set me free.”

“How?” she says again. “Why?”

He’s still gazing at Renly. “Gods – the poor babe has my nose!”

“Jaime! How?”

“Cersei,” he says. “She’s set the Golden Company on Winterfell. They travel to us on the Kingsroad – they will be upon us in little over a fortnight.”

“And Daenerys wants your help?”

“She thinks I may have some insight into Cersei’s tactics.”

“So she just … set you free?”

“Yes,” he says.

Brienne fights her scepticism. She wants to believe that, she wants to believe that so much.

But he’s looking at her now, then back at Renly, looking at them like a starving man looking at a sizzling steak. His eyes full of tears, full of pain, full of love.

He needs this moment, and she needs it too.

She goes to him, embraces him and Renly both. Kisses him. Kisses him again. Wipes the tears that are pouring from his eyes with her thumb.

He rubs her nose with his, kisses her again and then looks at her with a quizzical expression. “ _What_ are you wearing?”

She looks down at herself with a shrug of chagrin. “No effort has been spared in finding me a wedding dress,” she laughs.

“Gods.”

“I know.”

“Take it off, Seven hells! And the hair too – I want to marry _you_ , not some dressed-up mummer.”

She gasps. “M-marry me?”

“Unless you would rather marry Tyrion still?”

She gapes at him, a thousand reasons running through her head why marrying Jaime is a terrible idea, a thousand reasons why it will undermine everything Tyrion has worked towards.

“No,” she says anyway. “I want to marry _you_.”

His face breaks into a huge grin and he kisses her again, his lips lingering on hers even longer this time.

“Oh, Brienne,” he whispers gently. He looks like he wants to say more but ends up just sighing her name into her mouth again before kissing her some more. They sink back onto the bed together, kissing, touching, clinging to each other and to Renly. Jaime cries openly – he can’t seem to stop. He can’t seem to stop kissing her, either.

By the time he’s finished, his mouth is smudged with the ugly, bright lipstick they put on her earlier and his hair is mussed from her fingers. The pair of them look hilarious, but she can’t take her eyes off them in the huge looking glass. Her, Jaime and Renly. A family. A _family_. They can really be a family.

Jaime holds Renly, sitting on the bed to marvel over his son as Brienne divests herself of the hideous wedding dress and takes out the braids in her hair. She catches him watching her as she washes her face of the make-up, his eyes lingering hungrily on her bare legs, goosefleshed though they are with the cold.

She gives him a shy smile as she dresses again, in dark leather breeches and a smart leather tunic. Black leather gloves. She brushes her hair out in the looking glass.

She’s neat, and clean, and she looks like herself again.

Jaime smiles. Passes her Renly so he can wash himself of her lipstick and help her with her maiden’s cloak.

As he fastens it about her shoulders, there is a sharp knock at the door. Jaime flinches, probably reflexively.

“It will be Lady Sansa,” she whispers.

“Oh,” he says dourly. “Well, you’d better break the news then, hadn’t you.”

Brienne swallows. She opens the door, a mere crack. It is indeed Sansa.

She looks at Brienne, confused. “Where’s your dress, Brienne?”

Brienne steps out into the corridor, closing the door behind her. Handling this without Jaime’s input is probably the wisest course of action.

“What’s going on?” Sansa asks. “Podrick awaits you in the Sept.”

“That’s fine. That’s good.” Brienne swallows. She has no idea how to begin. She decides to just be blunt. “I – I will not be marrying Lord Tyrion, my Lady.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he is not the father of my child.”

She expects Sansa to react with surprise, but she doesn’t. “Tyrion Lannister is a Highborn Lord,” she says. Her tone is dark, one of admonishment. “Of a very great house. He has made you an incredibly generous offer of marriage, and has saved you and your bastard from a lifetime of shame. You would be incredibly foolish to turn him down for the love of some stablehand.”

“A stablehand?” Brienne doesn’t understand.

“Or a soldier, or cook, or whoever it truly was who laid with you, Brienne.”

“It was his brother.”

“His – brother?”

“Ser Jaime. He is Renly’s sire.”

“Ser Jaime _Lannister_?”

“Yes.”

Sansa is looking at her with a look of such utter, incredulous disbelief that Brienne starts to feel a little insulted.

“It’s true!” she protests, feeling her cheeks flame.

“You told me he treated you honourably at Riverrun. You did not tell me he had done so with his clothes off!”

Brienne gasps. She has never heard Lady Sansa speak with such vulgarity. “He did _not_!”

Sansa gives her a look that borders on pity.

Brienne feels her blush deepen further. “It was not until much later, not until he came north.”

Sansa shakes her head. “Brienne, _please._ Think on this before you make a rash decision. What future do you think you have, waiting for such a man?”

“Waiting? Queen Daenerys has released him. I can marry him today. Now. In place of Lord Tyrion.”

“What?”

“Queen Daenerys has released Jaime.”

Sansa looks suddenly quite pale. She grabs Brienne’s arm, holds it tightly in a grip like a claw. “You swore an oath to protect me.”

“Have I failed you in that regard, Lady Sansa?”

“Ser Jaime is not a good person. He is Cersei’s twin! Her lover, her partner. You don’t know …”

“I _do_ know. He gave me this sword – his family’s heirloom sword, so that I might protect you. To uphold the promise we both made to your mother.”

“That is _not_ his family’s heirloom.”

Sansa lets out a breath, her eyes wide and terrified. This is what she’s hiding, Brienne realises. This is what her stiff, brusque Lady of Winterfell persona covers up. She’s still a trembling girl at the thought of being at the mercy of Lannisters.

“My Lady,” Brienne says, locking eyes with her. “I travelled across the country with Jaime. I was with him when they took his hand. I know things he has told no-one else. He … I … I _swear_ to you, if your life were threatened, he would stand by my side and defend you with his very life, as I would.”

“As he was supposed to do for King Aerys?”

Brienne closes her eyes. This is it. This is the cold hard reality of what she will face from now on. Wed to the Kingslayer, mother to his child. It’s a taste of what Jaime has had for two decades.

“I understand,” she says. “But with the greatest respect, I do not care to hear your opinion on my choice of husband, my Lady. I shall marry Ser Jaime and I will do so with a glad heart, despite what everyone thinks they know of him.”

“Then I wish you good fortune, Lady Brienne. I hope that you are right. I shall not be attending your wedding.”

She turns and disappears down the corridor. Brienne sighs. Goes back into Tyrion’s chambers to see Jaime sitting on the bed, regarding her from beneath his long hair.

“That didn’t go so well, did it?” he says.

She thinks briefly of lying, being smiling and cheery, and pretending that everyone is so very very happy for them, but she knows he won’t believe her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says instead. “I shall marry you nonetheless.”

And she does. She takes his hand in hers and leads him to the Sept, their child held in the crook of his arm. They stand together before the surprised and irritated Septon, with Podrick and Tyrion beside them. It’s far from perfect – Jaime’s cloak was made for his brother and barely reaches past his shoulderblades, and they have to awkwardly change places to have their hands bound together as Jaime has forgotten to don his golden hand in his haste to get to her.

But when they kiss, when she feels him smile against her mouth as their lips meet, she knows. She _knows_.

The wedding feast, meagre though it was to begin with, has now been cancelled entirely on Lady Sansa’s orders, and Brienne is informed that her things have been removed from her chambers down the corridor from Lady Sansa’s and taken up to the guest quarters on the other side of the castle, to the rooms where Jaime was held prisoner for so long.

The reason given is that the chambers Brienne held before are not big enough for her, Ser Jaime and little Renly, but Brienne suspects it is more to do with the fact Sansa doesn’t want to sleep in such close proximity to a Lannister.

She is also not to worry about reporting to Lady Sansa in the morning, or any other morning. It seems that Sansa cannot openly defy Queen Daenerys, and she has no grounds to dismiss Brienne from Winterfell, but she does not want her in her service any longer.

Tyrion, watching her with sad eyes as her life as she knew it changes in front of her, invites them all back to his chambers for a celebratory meal and wine. He takes Brienne’s hand in his as they walk through the gloomy corridors, hanging behind Jaime and Podrick to talk to her. Outside, the snow falls thick and fast, blanketing the castle in an oppressive silence.

It doesn’t feel right. Even the usual ribald soldiers’ chatter and the laughter of playing children is absent from the castle today. Brienne feels as if she has somehow changed the fabric of Winterfell life by choosing this. By choosing Jaime.

“She may yet change her mind, Brienne,” Tyrion whispers. “She does not yet know Jaime – none of them do. They will come to see him as we do. All he needs is this chance.”

She nods, and smiles, though it doesn’t help the sting of hurt she feels. It shouldn’t matter about Jaime. They know _her_.

Tyrion hosts an excellent meal, with wine flowing and all sorts of food that he has sweet-talked people into parting with. They eat and drink and talk and laugh until nightfall, Jaime sitting so close he is practically on her lap, his hand only leaving her thigh to partake of the food and drink, or to stroke Renly’s plump cheek.

And when he looks at her … when he _looks_ at her with his beautiful, heady, slightly intoxicated green eyes, she feels as though she is naked already.

Tyrion starts to clear away plates, throwing hints to Podrick about the lateness of the hour. Pod, who is well in his cups by this point, fails to take the hint and has to be told, bluntly, that this is a wedding night and that the bride and groom will want to consummate their vows.

“You will forgive us, my Lady, if Pod and I do not attempt the bedding ceremony?” Tyrion says with a wry chuckle. “Your chambers are some distance away and I fear you are a little heavy for the two of us to carry all that way.”

Jaime guffaws, a little too loudly, at the thought. He pulls her to her feet and kisses her. “I’d quite like the joy of disrobing my bride myself,” he grins.

Outside, the snow has stopped, but the silence remains. The corridors of Winterfell are deserted, dark except for the braziers.

Jaime and Brienne take their time, walking hand in hand towards their chambers, Renly wrapped beneath the bridal cloak. He’s fast asleep, despite the cold.

As much as they intensely desire to get to their bed, Brienne senses Jaime is loving being out of that room, too. They take a slow, meandering route, stopping to gaze at the clouds that rush through the night sky, to listen to the sounds of the wind, or just to gaze into each other’s eyes and kiss.

As they cross between the towers, they hear footsteps coming down one of the long, stone corridors, and Jaime playfully pulls Brienne and Renly into an alcove, wrapping her in his arms and planting naughty kisses on her neck and face. Brienne swallows a peal of childish giggles, then a squeal as he nips her neck with his teeth.

It’s a couple of serving girls, carrying armfuls of dirty linen.

“Did you hear what happened?” says one of the girls as they pass. Brienne tries to hold her laughter as Jaime squirms his cold fingers into her breeches, snickering into her neck.

“What?” says the other.

“The Kingslayer!”

Jaime lifts his head.

“What about him?”

“They let him out to go to his brother’s wedding and he held the Septon at swordpoint and made ‘im marry Lady Brienne to him!”

“To the Kingslayer?”

“Yes! Poor woman, he’s probably forcing himself on her right now.” Jaime pulls his hand out of her breeches.

“I don’t know, don’t reckon there’s any man who could have her if she didn’t want to be had. I wouldn’t mess with her. She’ll probably chop his balls off.”

“Poor Lord Tyrion though. He’s such a lovely little man …”

Their voices fade as they disappear down the corridor.

Jaime and Brienne look at each other, the passion and the fun all but gone. The rest of the walk back to their room is muted, and they don’t touch each other.

Inside, the room is dark and cold – no servants have been to light the fire or light the candles. Brienne’s things have been dumped in a bundle on the table, and even little Renly’s crib has been stripped of sheets and blankets.

It seems they are on their own. Not guests, not highborn. Not wanted.

Jaime’s face is hurt and angry. He’d had better treatment as a prisoner.

Brienne passes Renly to him and sets to work, scavenging some wood and coals from a brazier outside and using them to get a fire going in the grate. She lights the candles, too, but not too many. Just enough so they can see each other. Just enough to be romantic.

Jaime sorts the crib, placing it over by their bedside awkwardly with his single hand, but he manages to get some blankets in there, enough to keep Renly warm. He gently lowers him in, rocking the crib with his foot as he does.

“Will he wake?” he asks, looking down at his sleeping son with wonder in his eyes.

“He’ll be hungry at some point. But the sleep is getting better.”

Brienne closes the door. The room still looks sad, and cold, the stone floor shiny with frost in a couple of places, but they are together. Alone, and they are married.

She offers him a sad smile from the darkness, and he returns it.

“No,” he says. “No sadness. I never thought to have you in this room when I woke this morning. Nor our son. I know this isn’t ideal, but it’s a gift. Tis a gift to be able to say you are my wife.”

She nods. “Tyrion spoke the truth. They will see. They will see you for who you are, as I did.”

He looks sceptical. “It matters not. They, and their opinions, their gossip, their loathing, are outside this room and we are in here. In here there is only love, and I intend to love you _well_ , my Lady wife.”

He comes to her then and she leans down to him, expecting him to kiss her. Instead, he cups her cheek with his left palm, stroking his thumb across the line of her cheekbone. His eyes drink her in, his brow knotted and his lips parted.

“I could not touch you before,” he whispers. “In the dungeon. Nor ever have I been able to, not as I wished. So I have a _lot_ of touching that I need to do.”

She laughs, and then he _does_ kiss her, his mouth warm and soft in the cold of the room, his breath sighing on her cheek.

He stands back to regard her, his hand sliding over the line of her jaw, following the pulsebeat in her neck. He unfastens the first two hooks of her tunic, laying the hide gently open to see the shape of her collarbone, to trace the line of it with his fingertips.

His hand stops on the scars she has there from the bear’s claws, and he leans close again to brush each claw mark with his lips. His hand moves down, undoes two more fastenings, opens her tunic some more.

He steps back further, pulls his own tunic over his head, followed by his undershirt. He struggles doing it one-handed, but he’s so beautiful that Brienne can’t quite find the faculties to help him. All she can do is stand there, big and dumb and mute, and ogle his golden, chiselled beauty. His body is incredible. Every muscle perfect.

He stands close to her again, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his skin, and he undoes the last two fastenings on her tunic. He opens it fully, folding it back on itself to expose her breasts.

His hand slides up her flank and cups her left teat, his thumb caressing her nipple until it stands proud and pink in the firelight. He lets out a gust of a breath that is almost a prayer.

He dips his head to suckle at her nipple like Renly does, but it’s not at all like Renly. It’s hot, and wet and he swirls it with his tongue and pulls at it, ever so gently, with his teeth. Brienne feels her breath quicken, and then a moan escapes her throat as he moves to the other one. His beard rasps her awoken flesh and she feels her hips start to roll against his. He grasps her against him with his right arm, and his hips answer hers, pressing into her with his obviously hard cock.

His lips slide down her belly but his hand stays on her breast until he’s kneeling before her. His mouth places soft kisses on her hard, flat muscles. He unlaces her breeches with a trembling hand and buries his mouth in the triangle of skin that he reveals with a moan.

He kisses her and kisses her, open-mouthed, panting, and his hand pulls on the waistband of her breeches, tugging them down over her hips until she’s standing there, all-but-naked. Her tunic lies open and hanging from her shoulders, her breeches round her ankles, her smallclothes being nudged further and further down by Jaime’s chin.

He means to … oh … she gasps as his mouth meets her sex, and his tongue … his _tongue_! It goes right for that place that she rubs to make herself come, and oh … ohhhhh …. Her knees buckle and she has to grab at the stone of the mantle to keep herself from falling, her other hand instinctively fisting in his hair.

She has never given herself pleasure like this, not even in her most adventurous experiments – this is something else. The small room fills with the sound of her breath, the sound of her rasping cries. She can’t keep quiet, she can’t stand upright, she can’t ….

An intrusive thought invades her mind – that he must have done this to Cersei a million times to be so good, but right then she doesn’t care. Right then she’s almost grateful.

Her knees buckle yet again and she almost falls on him, so he shoves her back to the chair. It’s hard and cold beneath her heated flesh, but he’s on his knees between her thighs again almost immediately, and the cold is forgotten. Everything is forgotten but his mouth, his tongue. Her feet scrabble madly at the rushes on the floor, hands grasping at the arms of the chair, hips arching out of the seat to get closer to his mouth. His mouth … his _tongue_!

He’s going to … she’s going to … She comes with a cry so loud she almost startles herself, an ugly grunt of sheer animalistic release that hurts her throat with its force. Her hips jerk, jerk again, every muscle in her body tight and pumping.

When she recovers her senses, Jaime is in front of her, a smug grin on his wet face.

“Here,” he says, and kisses her hard, swirling his tongue around hers. “Taste your pleasure, my Lady wife. I hope you find it as sweet as I.”

She is insensate, unable to form words. She tastes his tongue with a soft, long moan.

“I would have you now, if you have no objection?” he whispers. His eyes hold hers. “Tell me, are you still sore from birthing? Do you still bleed?”

“No,” she manages to murmur. “I believe I should be all right.”

“I shall be gentle,” he promises. “And I would have you on top, so that you may take charge of our rutting. Stop if you have any discomfort.”

“I will.”

He pulls off his breeches sits back on his knees in front of the fire, his cock sticking up from his lap, hard and delicious and dark with blood and want. He catches her looking at it and wraps it in his fist. “Care to joust, my lady?” he boasts.

“That’s a mighty lance, ser.”

“I’ll try not to unseat you with it.”

She goes to him, standing above him with her legs either side of his lap, and she is immediately reminded of doing this with him in the dungeon.

But this time, he reaches for her, his hand grasping hers and his stump curling around the small of her back. He pulls her down to him, and this time, getting him inside her without him confined by chains is so much easier. She sinks slowly down onto his cock, and he groans.

“Mmmm you feel good,” he groans against her collarbone. “Is there pain?”

“No,” she whispers. She’s so slick she feels like she could take a trebuchet inside her right now without pain.

“Good.” He wraps her tight around her back in both his arms, and holds her so close that her nipples are caught and rubbed by his chest hair as they thrust against one another. The sensation is delicious – naked skin sliding against naked skin, the warmth of the flickering fire, Jaime’s mouth, his breath, his hand.

He’s savouring it all, she realises. He takes a long, wonderful tug at her nipple with his mouth – each of his strokes is meticulous, perfectly calculated, as if he’s trying to commit every second to memory lest it’s all snatched away again. Poor Jaime. Poor Jaime.

He closes his eyes as he kisses her, and then opens them again to gaze into hers. His hand wanders the length of her backbone, soft fingers exploring her with such tenderness.

It’s sweet, it’s _so_ sweet it hurts, and this time it’s that feeling, the emotions, the gazes, the ache of love in her chest that builds upon itself again and again and again until she can’t hold it in. Suddenly she’s crying his name and clutching him to her and her body is soaring, roaring, flaming and flying.

And she is on her back on the chilly stone, and he is over her, out of her, his cock in his hand as he groans and spends into the dirty rushes.

“Gods,” he husks. “Brienne …”

He lays on top of her, his cock still thick and twitching between their bellies, kissing and kissing her.

“Did that please you, my Lady?”

She nods, and smiles, and he smiles too.

“Come,” he whispers. “I am too old to be lying on this stone floor, and you cannot imagine how many times I wished you lay beside me in this bed.”

She takes his hand and they clamber into the bed together. It’s old and soft, and the sheets are threadbare, but with the fire roaring warmly now, it feels like all the seven heavens to wrap themselves in the pleasures of each other’s flesh.

He gazes at her, his eyes so intense she feels herself blush. He takes her hand and holds it against his chest. Lifts her fingers to his mouth to kiss her knuckles.

Just then, perfectly timed, a wail emits from the cradle beside the bed. A little hand is visible, reaching up at nothing. Brienne extricates herself reluctantly from Jaime’s arms and picks little Renly up. She brings him back to bed with her, laying him softly between the two of them for his feed. Jaime rubs his little back as he suckles, his face thoughtful.

“Did you truly have no idea he grew in your belly, Brienne?”

“Truly not,” she says. “I had been fighting the dead that very day. I knew nothing until our babe landed in Sansa’s chamber pot.”

“In her chamber pot?”

She blushes furiously. “I thought I had been taken ill.”

“I wish I had been there,” he whispers, reaching out for her, caressing her face. “Perhaps I would have known … or at least been there to comfort you in your pain.”

He gets up, his naked body even more golden and perfect in the firelight. She notices again how sculpted he is – not battle hard perhaps, but muscular and defined all over. He’s certainly kept himself in shape while he’s been prisoner.

He goes to the table, where he has a flagon of what looks like wine. When he pours it though, it’s water. He drinks, looks at her with a probing smile.

“Perhaps I could have helped you choose his name, as well.”

Brienne laughs, mostly for her own benefit. She has been expecting this conversation at some point. “Renly suits him well enough,” she says.

“He’s too Lannister to be a Renly,” he complains. “Renly Lannister sounds wrong, as well. It’s not too late – he’s barely two moons old. We could still change it.”

“I have no desire to!” she chuckles. “But I will make a promise – when you bring forth a child alone and in agony, into a chamber pot, then you may choose how he is hailed.”

He has to chuckle too. “I will hold you to that, my Lady!”

At her breast, Renly’s suckling slows to a dreamy, gentle pull, and then stops altogether. He breathes deep and slow. She picks him up and rocks him a little, to make sure that he is fully asleep, before gently lowering him back into his crib.

When she turns back, Jaime is sitting on the bed, resting back against the pillows, looking at her naked body where she is bent over the crib. His cock is getting hard again.

“Come here,” he whispers. “My cock has not had its fill of you just yet.”

She crawls towards him, eyes on his, until their lips meet. He rolls on top of her and mounts her gently, his eyes on her eyes and his hand sliding between their bodies to touch between her legs. His mouth twists into a grimace of tight pleasure as he pumps in and out of her, moaning about how wet, how warm, how perfect she feels. They build up together, build to a groaning, gasping, desperately panting heap of limbs and grasping hands.

When he yanks himself urgently from her body to spill his seed on her belly, and then dips his head to lick it off her skin, she comes too, almost weeping like some pathetic maiden from the joy of it all.

Her husband. Her husband …

And when he curls behind her back to sleep, his warm breath on her sleep-warm skin, she forgets the rest of it. The rest of Winterfell, and all her oaths. It doesn’t matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEY DID IT! Woooo! And they did the smut thing too!
> 
> And you KNOW who helped me through it - it was the Smut Queen herself, CaptainTarthister. So, huge, huge, eight million thankses to her as always, she rocks my world :)


	8. Tyrion III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are drawn against Cersei.

Tyrion approaches the door with trepidation – he could hear the grunting from the far end of the hall.

He waits a respectful amount of time outside– it’s ill fortune to interrupt a honeymooning couple, after all. But after twenty minutes, it hasn’t stopped, nor sped up. He’s quite impressed by Jaime’s stamina.

Then – Brienne starts singing. She has a terrible voice, high and tuneless, and she’s singing something that sounds like a lullaby. Well, whatever gets Jaime off – Tyrion is not exactly one to judge.

This is getting too odd, and they’re going to be late. He raps on the door and stands back, wanting to give them time to cover up, but to his surprise, the door opens immediately. It’s Brienne, a smile on her broad, homely face, and she’s fully dressed, the Battleborn dozing in her arms.

Behind her, the grunting continues. It’s Jaime – he’s exercising on the rug before the fire, lying down and then pulling himself into a sitting position, repeatedly. Tyrion isn’t too sure what it’s meant to achieve exactly – it looks like far too much hard work to him.

“Are you ready?” he asks both of them. “We shouldn’t keep Her Grace waiting too long.”

“We were expecting you twenty minutes ago,” says Jaime. He jumps to his feet, grabbing a cloth to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He pulls his shirt on, followed by a dark leather jerkin that Tyrion recognises as Brienne’s. It looks good on him – tight in the arms and around his well-defined chest.

He dons one of Brienne’s fur-trimmed cloaks, too, though it brushes the floor behind his feet as he walks.

Tyrion sneaks a glance at the newlyweds as they walk through the Winterfell corridors. It’s the first time he has seen them in the four days since their wedding, and he has to admit, they both look good. _Satisfied_ would be the word he would choose – Brienne has some colour in her cheeks and looks five years younger. Her customary scowl is all but absent, and the corners of her lips are twisted into a permanent dreamy smile.

His brother positively _glows_. His golden skin is even more radiant, and his green eyes sparkle in a way Tyrion hasn’t seen in years. Married life obviously suits them both.

Tyrion leads them both along the battlements – not strictly necessary, but the soldiers do so love to see the Battleborn, and it seems as though even Jaime’s cursed presence doesn’t put them off too much. Little Renly has his cheeks pinched, his head stroked, and various pieces of armour, weapons and trinkets pressed against his little hands.

One of the Wildling women takes a lock of his hair with a knife bigger than the babe himself before anyone can stop her. Jaime looks ready to murder the woman, but Tyrion manages to hold him back. These people hold their lives in balance at the moment. Without the adoration of the people of Winterfell, their position looks altogether different.

All this adoration, however, means they are comfortably late to the meeting, and Daenerys fixes Tyrion with a face of thunder as they walk through the doors to Winterfell’s solar.

“Our apologies, Your Grace,” he says with what he hopes is a winning smile. “We were somewhat waylaid by the common folk.”

Daenerys isn’t looking at him, however. She’s looking at Brienne, an expression of neutral distaste on her face.

“I was not expecting Lady Tarth to attend,” she says, at Tyrion.

“Lady Lannister. And I thought we could utilise her expertise. Now that Lady Sansa has dismissed her from her service.”

Behind Daenerys, Jon Snow stands up. He has the good grace to look uncomfortable – clearly this is new information to him.

“Of course,” he says. “Welcome, Lady Lannister. Anything you can contribute would be gratefully heard.”

“Thank you,” says Brienne, shooting a dark look at Tyrion – she hadn’t known she wasn’t invited. There was no way she would have attended if she had.

Tyrion makes a space at the table for them, nudging a hole between Ser Davos and Jorah Mormont. Ser Davos ends up shoulder to shoulder with Brienne, much to her obvious displeasure, though he has a bit of a goofy grin on his face at being so close to the Battleborn, attached though he is to his mother’s teat. Jaime and Mormont eye each other warily.

On the table lies a map, spread out just enough to show Winterfell and its immediate surroundings. On the Kingsroad, someone has placed a group of carved wooden lions.

It takes Tyrion a moment to orient himself – he is so used to seeing lions on a map as friendly that he has to push himself to realise that they represent Cersei. Cersei’s forces.

“So, to catch you up,” Daenerys says. “Cersei’s army marches down the Kingsroad towards us. She –“

“Why?” Jaime interrupts. Everyone turns to him.

“What do you mean?” asks Daenerys. She’s clearly displeased at the interruption, but Tyrion notes that her eyes drop almost helplessly to the press of Jaime’s chest against his tunic.

“Cersei’s plan was to wait,” he tells the room. “She planned to wait until the fighting against the dead was done – use the Golden Company to kill whichever side won. Marching on Winterfell now, in the middle of the war, makes no sense.”

“We don’t know,” says Jon Snow.

“Do you not have spies? Scouts?” Jaime asks.

Tyrion tries not to smirk. These were some of the very objections he’d raised himself.

“We couldn’t spare the men,” says Jon. “Daenerys – Her Grace – has been scouting for us on her dragons.”

“From the air? What good is that? You can bet your life Cersei has this place crawling with informants already. She probably knows our every move.”

Tyrion almost claps. Making plans with everyone at Winterfell has all been very honourable, very sensible, but to people who have been raised by Tywin Lannister, it seems like madness.

“And if you’ve been flying over them, why haven’t you just burned them?”

There is a gasp from everyone present, including Brienne. _Ah_ , Tyrion thinks, and here is the disadvantage of being raised by Tywin Lannister.

“How many villages are there on the Kingsroad, Ser Jaime?” Daenerys says. “How many inns? How many holdfasts? I’m not burning innocent people to get to Cersei.”

“So what _is_ your plan?”

Jon Snow leans over the table, placing a slender finger onto the map – on a field that straddles the Kingsroad between Cersei and Winterfell. “Our plan is that we meet her here. Before she’s had a chance to get bedded in, before her army is rested from the march. It means we battle sooner than we anticipated, a _lot_ sooner, but we’ll have the advantage, and we’ll also have Winterfell at our backs. We can run a constant supply line, and treat the injured inside the castle.”

Jaime nods. “What sort of equipment have they brought with them? Were they anticipating a siege?”

Daenerys nods. “Towers. Battering rams. Trebuchets and catapults. Also several of those scorpions.”

“That could be a problem.”

“They also have a company of fighters mounted on elephants.”

“Well, you’ll need to burn those. And as much of the siege equipment as you can, as early in the fight as you can. If we lose the battle, at least they won’t be able to come at the castle.”

Daenerys tilts her head. Her eyebrows raise. “We’re not going to lose the battle.”

“The scorpions are still going to be a problem,” Mormont says. “That field is very exposed, they’ll see you coming a long way off, Your Grace.”

“We’ll need to make a feint,” says Brienne. She has the Battleborn held high on her shoulder now, he’s making little disgruntled noises and she’s rubbing his back with her free hand. Tyrion notices with some amusement that there is a long runner of milky sick down the back of her cloak. “Draw their attention while the dragon approaches.”

Jaime nods. “Our best chance would have been spies and saboteurs to make the scorpions inoperable before they even reached the battlefield, but yes, my Lady wife has the right of it. A feint will have to suffice.”

Tyrion is looking at the map now, at the area close to Winterfell. It shows a cross section of the castle, including the dungeons and kitchens and, interestingly, the crypt. He places his finger on it, on the deepest section, which extends far past the castle walls.

“How close is this to the surface?” he muses.

Jon Snow shrugs. “I’ve no idea, my Lord.”

“What were you thinking?” asks Daenerys.

“If we could dig a tunnel – from the end of the crypt, out to the surface – look – it’s right behind our camp. Behind this hill here, too.”

“It might be an easy way back to the castle for the wounded?”

“More than that. You could pass through the crypts with Drogon. You wouldn’t need to fly all the way from the castle walls, and they wouldn’t see you coming.”

Silence falls over the room.

“How wide is it down there?” Daenerys says eventually “Would Drogon fit?”

Jon Snow shifts uncomfortably. “It’s quite narrow, your Grace. And … there are generations of Starks at rest down there. Lots of stonework.”

“I would be happy to hire a stonemason to replace any my dragon damaged,” says Daenerys, quite pointedly.

Jon Snow nods, but he still looks uncomfortable. “I’ll look into the logistics,” he promises.

“We should still do the feint,” Jaime says. “It should always be our top priority to sow chaos for our enemies.”

“Agreed,” says Tyrion. “The Golden Company are mercenaries, so they are well-trained, well-honed. But no one on Cersei’s side is fighting for their home, or for loyalty or love for her. Just for gold. Once they see a few of their comrades burn, they may well decide they aren’t being paid enough to face a dragon.”

“Thank you,” says Daenerys. “Some excellent suggestions. The King in the North and I will finalise our plans, and we will reconvene in the morning. At sun up.” She turns her gaze on Tyrion. “Promptly.”

He nods with a smile of chagrin. “Of course, Your Grace. My apologies once again.”

Everyone starts to file out of the room. Jaime goes to Brienne’s side, gently checking that she and the babe are all right, even though he has stood not four feet from them the entire time.

“Oh,” Jaime says suddenly, turning back to Daenerys and Jon Snow. “Are we permitted to use the training yard?”

“The training yard?” asks Daenerys, with something akin to amusement.

“If we are to be in battle again soon,” he elaborates. “It’s been a while since I held a sword. And Brienne’s probably a little rusty too – she’s held naught but my arse cheeks for the best part of a week.”

Everyone freezes. Daenerys’ lip curls in repulsion. Jon suppresses a snigger. Brienne goes the brightest red that Tyrion has ever seen her. She closes her eyes.

“By all means,” Daenerys says.

Jaime does a deep, exaggerated bow. “Your Grace,” he says, and takes his leave.

In the corridor outside, Brienne is furious. “ _Why_ in the name of all the seven hells did you say that, Jaime?” she hisses.

He shrugs. “She thinks me vulgar and it amuses me.”

“Doesn’t help our cause much, does it, though, brother?” Tyrion admonishes. “You are supposed to be proving yourself an able and knowledgeable battle commander, not some privy-mouthed ass.”

“Did I not do that in there? Honestly, it’s a wonder they have survived this long with that array of imbeciles making the decisions. Knight of the Onions, who sailed right into your wildfire trap? Jorah Mormont, too – what has he commanded on Bear Island? Maybe two dozen men? Ned Stark’s bastard knows how to defend a 700-foot-high wall, but that’s not exactly applicable here, is it? And Daenerys herself, who attacked our loot train – Cersei’s loot train – at our strongest position. If it weren’t for those dragons, I’d say you’d picked the losing side.”

“We,” says Tyrion, using a low voice to try to encourage Jaime to do the same. “ _We_ chose the losing side.”

“Ah, so you agree.”

“I didn’t say that. But it has been … difficult.”

“They should all be grateful you put those crossbow bolts into our father, you know that, don’t you. If he was leading that army instead of Cersei he’d be having dragon meat for breakfast, lunch and supper for the rest of his natural life.”

Tyrion drops his head. He can’t deny that. “They have _us_ ,” he says softly. “That will have to do.”

Brienne places a gentle hand on Jaime’s arm. “Renly sleeps,” she tells him softly. “We should … change. For the training yard.”

A look, soft but full of promise, passes between the two of them, and they hold hands the whole way back to their chambers. Tyrion bids them farewell at the door, but they hardly seem to hear him. No sooner has the door closed behind them than he can hear the sounds of frantic kissing. Frantic gasping. Dropping clothes.

Tyrion lingers longer than he should, happy for them, but slightly sad, and slightly aroused as well. He makes the walk back to his own chambers with his cock hard in his breeches, knowing there is nothing and no one to sate it. He doesn’t even have the heart to deal with the problem himself, so he sits at his table and drinks until it goes away.

When he’s finished both flagons and most of his secret wineskin, he realises it has past evening. It’s grown dark in his chambers and at some point, someone has been in to light his candles and leave him his supper.

He picks at it, slightly suspicious of the meat, which has a greeny-grey tinge to it that is altogether less than appetising.

He goes to the large window by his bed that overlooks Winterfell’s main courtyard. Outside, he sees Brienne and his brother in the training yard, even in the growing dark. Unsurprisingly, she has him on his arse in the snow, her training sword pointed at his neck. Podrick stands close by, holding a well-wrapped Renly, who is of course being accosted by every passing soldier, Wildling and washer-woman in Winterfell.

Jaime’s up again, sodden wet and looking very pissed off with himself. He circles her warily, managing to block her next blow but failing to follow up quickly enough with his clumsy left hand to stop himself from being dumped on his arse again. Even Podrick is laughing at that one – Tyrion sees him turn away, his shoulders shaking.

Just then, there’s a knock at his door. A soft one – at first he thinks it must be one of the servants, come to get his dinner plates. He hails them to enter, but when the door opens, it’s the serious face of Jon Snow that he sees.

“Please – Your Grace – come in,” he says, hoping he’s not slurring or unsteady. “I’d offer you some wine, but I seem to have run out.”

Jon Snow shakes his head. He looks troubled.

“What’s the matter?”

Jon doesn’t speak for a long, long moment. “I shouldn’t,” he says then, almost to himself.

“Shouldn’t what?”

“You’re her Hand. I’m her –“

“I know.”

“But today, at the meeting – I realised. We need your brother, don’t we.”

“I think so.”

“We’ve needed him all this time.”

“Jaime’s a lot of things, and I understand everyone’s fear of him, but he’s a very experienced battle commander, Your Grace.”

“He saw through everything – all our weaknesses, all our problems. He knew what we should have prioritised, and what didn’t work. And he wanted to do difficult things, tough decisions.”

Tyrion nods.

Jon finally manages to raise his head, enough to look Tyrion in the eye. “Daenerys and I – we made the plans,” he says. “For the battle.”

He holds them out to Tyrion, a rolled piece of parchment held between his black-gloved fingers.

Tyrion takes it, and sits at his dining table to unroll it, smoothing it flat on the polished wooden surface.

It is, almost to the letter, exactly what he, Jaime and Brienne had suggested. A feint along the left flank, followed by a dragon attack to take out the siege weapons. The attack from the crypts will work too – the King in the North has a crew digging a tunnel already, and moving the statues of the dead out of the way to widen the passage for Drogon. Tyrion looks up from the scroll at the man before him, confused as to what the problem is.

But then he takes a second look. Looks again, his heart in his mouth. Wanting to believe he’s misread it, hoping beyond hope.

“Jaime and Brienne are leading the feint,” he says. His voice is weak. Choked. “With less than a hundred men at their backs.”

Jon Snow nods.

“That’s a fucking suicide run,” says Tyrion. “That’s not enough men by half.”

Jon nods again. Tyrion draws a slow, slow breath.

“Daenerys?” asks Tyrion, though he already knows the answer. “Why?”

“Just warn your brother,” Snow says, turning to leave.

“No!” shouts Tyrion. He gets up and slams the door closed as the King in the North tries to open it. “No, you don’t get to come in here and drop that on me and walk away. She’s my _Queen_ , Jon Snow. The Queen I chose. My brother is an asset here, as is my good-sister. And she wants to throw them away like they are naught but table scraps? I need to know _why._ ”

“Your brother’s a traitor – he’s a turncloak and a murderer and a sister-fucker.”

“No …”

“He is – he _is_. He pushed my brother out of a window.”

“Why not execute him, then? She’s had the best part of a year to do it. No one would have mourned him, save for me and the Maid of Tarth. And speaking of Brienne, why send her to her death, too? She’s blameless. A shitty taste in men, perhaps, but she’s never wronged Daenerys, she’s fought bravely for her. One of the best we have.”

“I _know_.”

“You’re not convincing me, Jon Snow. It makes no sense at all.”

“I can’t. I _can’t_.”

“What’s the _real_ reason?”

“Daenerys can’t have children,” Jon says. His eyes torn, full of rage, full of misery. “The witch who killed Khal Drogo told her, and we’ve been trying now for over a year with no success, so she – she’s convinced herself it’s true.”

“So?” Tyrion doesn’t understand. In his wine-soaked stupor, it takes a moment to get through to him. “Ohhh …” he sighs as it slowly dawns on him. “The Battleborn. She means to take the Battleborn for her own?”

Jon Snow nods. “You did too good a job in making people love that baby. She thinks he’s a threat to her rule.”

“That’s ridiculous. He’s no threat – he’s a _baby_. When the war’s over we’ll all go back to Casterly Rock, sit on our big pile of Lannister gold and live happily ever after. Does Daenerys really think we’re going to rise up against her? The Lannisters who helped her win her throne?”

But Jon is shaking his head. “She thinks people will see him as Cersei’s nephew. Joffrey and Tommen’s brother.”

“Jaime and Brienne are in _love_. They have no designs on the thrice-damned Iron Throne. Surely Daenerys can see that?”

“She can’t. All this Battleborn stuff you did … she thinks it’s destiny – a child born amid the battle for the dead? A symbol for the weak and frightened that spurs people to acts of bravery? How well does all that horseshit feed into her own mythology? You shouldn’t have done that. He was safer when he was just some unknown’s bastard.”

“But if he’s her heir …. Oh – fuck. _Fuck_.”

“She thinks a baby such as this should ride a dragon one day.”

Tyrion sinks into a hair, his head in his hands. “Fuck,” he says again.

“I wanted you to know. Tomorrow we’re going to unveil those battle plans in front of everyone, and then they won’t just be plans, they’ll be orders.”

“And if they refuse …”

“Then she cries treason, burns them both with the dragons, and takes the baby anyway.”

“Fuck,” Tyrion says for the third time.

“I know. And this – this is treason too, I know. But I can’t let her. As much as I care for her, as much as I believe in her, this … this is too much. It’s madness. A kind of madness.”

“Yes, it is.”

Jon Snow is looking at him then, his eyes so dark and big and trusting he almost looks like a child. “If anyone can think of a way out of it, it’s you.”

Tyrion sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not written Jon Snow before, so apologies if he is a little clunky!
> 
> Thanks as always to CaptainTarthister for her reading, suggesting and handholding services. They are an invaluable part of what makes this story so much fun to write. Thanks, my dear for being an absolute goddess.


	9. Jaime III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime finds out the truth.

Jaime is going to die.

His heart pounds so hard it hurts, his breath rasps through his raw throat and his muscles are _so tight_ , every one, that he thinks they are going to burst through his skin.

He’s on his back, sideways on the bed, knees hanging off the edge. Brienne is kneeling on the floor, her head between his legs, his cock in her mouth. Well, in her throat would be more accurate, Jaime thinks – his lady wife’s mouth is nothing short of _cavernous_. And her _tongue_ – he has to admit, there are some completely unexpected advantages to marrying such a big woman. He had never imagined it was possible to have your balls licked _at the same time_ your cock was getting sucked.

She runs a gloved hand up his naked chest – she’s still in her full plate from their training session, Oathkeeper still buckled at her hip, and he’s completely naked. She presses her palm to his mouth, trying to quiet his cries of pleasure lest he wake their babe.

She’s not successful. He can’t keep quiet, he _can’t_. She’s driving him crazy – he’s got one foot up on the bed now, toes curling in the sheets, and the fingers of his good hand are grasping blindly at the pillows.

He can hear himself, far off in the distance, groaning and begging and spitting curses through clenched teeth. Gods, she’s going to kill him. He’s going to die and they’re going to find the happiest fucking corpse in Westeros naked on this bed.

Suddenly, so suddenly it takes him completely by surprise, her tongue takes him over the edge. He grasps her hair and pulls her mouth away, just in time for the first spurt of his seed to hit her in the face. It’s followed quickly by the second, which splatters across the dark steel of the breastplate he had made for her in King’s Landing, and then the rest rolls thickly down his shaft to pool on his belly as he groans.

The room is full of the sounds of their harsh breathing, full of the rich scent of his spend. She smiles at him proudly as it rolls down her cheek.

“My Lady,” he pants. “You look quite lovely this evening, adorned with my precious pearls.”

She laughs and stands to wipe down her face and her armour. She’s flushed with passion, and clearly as aroused as he. He sits up to push aside her hauberk and caress between her legs.

“Perhaps you have a little something I might wear as well?”

“Perhaps,” she smirks, not quite yet adept at bedroom talk as he, but eager nonetheless.

She shucks her armour and her sword artlessly, then unlaces her breeches. He helps her impatiently, pulling down her smallclothes and undoing her tunic to bare her breasts to the candlelight.

He reclines on the pillows and pulls her towards him, on her knees, encouraging her to straddle his chest. He places a soft kiss on the thick curls of her sex, then laps his tongue around that hard little part of her that makes her come. She thrusts against his face immediately.

“Mmmm,” he moans into her sex. “I think I’ve found Tarth’s most precious jewel.”

That makes her laugh, but her laugh turns into a breathy grunt as he buries his face again. Her head goes back on her shoulders above him and her rough hands slide into his hair, clutching him against her. He pulls back a little to catch his breath and she shoves him back against her.

“Don’t stop,” she moans. “Gods, don’t stop.”

It seems he was right all those years ago – a good fight does get her juices flowing. Flowing right over his lips and chin, soaking his beard.

She’s thrusting against his face hard now, hands braced on the headboard. He grabs her arse with his good hand just to slow her down a bit – he’s worried she’s going to break his nose, or his teeth. She starts moaning his name and he knows she’s close – he can feel it in the tautness of her belly and thighs.

He latches on to Tarth’s most precious jewel once more, suckling with his lips and teeth. She whimpers and twists in his arms, and he can’t take his eyes off her face. It’s contorted into the ugliest grimace he has ever seen, and it’s absolutely adorable.

Suddenly, they are interrupted by a bang on the chamber door. Brienne leaps off Jaime, grabbing the sheet to cover her nakedness. She blushes right to her toes.

Jaime curses. Scrabbles around for his breeches – they are on the other side of the room, in a tangle with his borrowed armour.

The door bangs again, more insistent this time.

“Have patience!” Jaime calls. “Unless you want an eyeful of the Little Kingslayer!”

“Jaime!” It’s Tyrion’s voice.

Finally he manages to get his feet into his breeches and pulls them up. They are inside out, but they cover him at least. He yanks the door open.

“This had better be _seriously_ important, brother.”

Tyrion’s eyes go to Brienne, clutching the sheets to her chin, and back to Jaime, his inside-out breeches and his wet beard. The trail of armour and clothing strewn across the floor.

“My apologies,” he says, looking down at his boots. “This couldn’t wait. I need you to come to my chambers.”

“Now?!”

“Now. Yes. Again – apologies. But something has come up, and I need to discuss it with you.”

“Both of us?” asks Brienne from the bed. “Renly’s asleep.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Uhm, no … Jaime will suffice, my lady. He can, uh … fill you in later.”

Jaime sighs. He doesn’t want to do this – he doesn’t want to go out there into the miserable cold corridors of miserable, cold Winterfell, he wants to get in his nice warm bed and fuck his nice warm wife. But there’s something on Tyrion’s face, something he doesn’t see very often. _Fear_.

“Give me a few moments to dress properly,” he tells his brother.

“Of course.”

Jaime shuts the door and sorts his clothes out. He washes the sweat and sex from himself in the wash bowl and dons them, borrowing Brienne’s thick woollen cloak again too. Dressed and ready, he goes to give her a lingering kiss goodbye.

Her eyes search his face, and they are worried eyes. “Stay safe, Jaime,” she warns him. “I mislike this.”

“Keep warm, my lovely wench. My face will be between those mighty thighs of yours again before this night is out, I swear.”

She smiles a tight smile, but she scrambles naked from the bed to hand him Widow’s Wail. Helps him buckle it around his waist. Kisses him, hard.

She goes back to bed, but takes Oathkeeper with her.

Jaime leaves with Tyrion.

Outside, the corridors of Winterfell are mostly deserted. Soldiers man the walls, but they eye Jaime suspiciously as he passes, and he hears a couple of muttered curses and hissed “Kingslayer”s. Being the Battleborn’s father and Brienne’s husband makes little difference, if he’s out and about without them, it seems.

There is a little more life over Tyrion’s side of the castle – laughter, chattering, good smells from the kitchens, and he even hears someone playing a fiddle in Winterfell’s main hall.

They pass it all quietly, heading up the stairs and to Tyrion’s chambers.

Tyrion checks the corridor carefully before opening the door.

Seated at the table, an untouched goblet of wine in front of him, and the weight of the world knotted up in his dark brows, sits Jon Snow. The King in the North.

Jaime looks to Tyrion. Back at Jon Snow. “What is this?” he asks.

Tyrion closes the door. Picks up a piece of paper that sits on the table. Passes it to Jaime.

“Battle plans,” he says. “Against Cersei.”

Jaime tries to unroll them. Fails with his single hand. Tyrion helps him, pinning the scroll to the table so that Jaime can use his left hand to pull it down.

He reads. It is indeed the battle plans. Strategy. Deployment. Commanders. Troop numbers.

He sees his own name, and Brienne’s. Leading the feint they suggested. How many men they will be taking with them. He swallows, hard. Fights the sick feeling rising in his chest.

He fixes Jon Snow with a look. “Is this a stupidity? It’s going to take more than that for a successful feint. Many times more.”

“He knows,” says Tyrion gently.

“Then why?”

“It’s deliberate,” says Jon Snow in his gruff, Northern voice, that could almost be Ned Stark’s.

Jaime lets out a long, slow breath. He feels the blood drain from his face.

“You mean to send me and Brienne to die?”

“Not I,” says Snow. “Daenerys.”

“Why? Atonement? A sacrifice to Cersei? She would leave our son an orphan … for what?”

“For herself,” Tyrion says. He’s picked up Snow’s goblet and is drinking from it himself. “She means to take the Battleborn as her heir.”

“Our _baby_? She wants our baby?”

Snow gets up. He looks like he has something foul in his mouth, and he can’t meet Jaime’s eye. “She can’t have her own children.”

“What – why ours? Why Renly?” The name still felt a bit distasteful in his mouth, but it was getting better. “There must be a thousand babes orphaned by the war, and thousands more to come.”

“They aren’t the Battleborn,” says Tyrion. He drinks again.

Jon Snow looks at the floor. “Daenerys thinks your babe has a destiny,” he says. “Born during a battle, two parents who bear Valyrian steel. Inspiring courage in men even as an infant – she thinks he could be meant to ride a dragon.”

Jaime can’t help himself but let out a bitter laugh. “The mythology you built is too potent, brother. It’s ended up doing us a disservice.”

“I know. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Seriously, though,” Jaime tells Jon Snow. “That’s insane. _She’s_ insane. You do know that, do you not?”

“Jaime …” says Tyrion.

“And you as well, brother. Surely you can see it? You’ve got yourself in Father’s position – Hand to a mad Targaryen!”

“Perhaps.” Tyrion admits. He pours himself another glass of wine.

“If she takes the Iron Throne, we’re fucked. We’d be better off with Cersei there, at least she can’t roast us with dragons.”

Tyrion and Jon Snow say nothing. Neither can meet his eye.

“Fuck,” says Jaime. He sits down. “Well she can find another heir. She’s _not_ getting our son. Brienne and I are _not_ going to die in that battle.”

“Yes,” says Tyrion. “That is our most immediate problem.”

“We have to run,” Jaime says. “Tonight. We’ll take the baby and go – over the walls if we must. If we got on a ship to Essos …”

“You wouldn’t make it to a ship,” says Jon Snow. “You’d get a few hours at best - we’ve got a meeting at dawn, remember? She’d know you were gone. She’d just hunt you down from the air.”

“That’s not to mention the problem of the dead, and Cersei’s army being on the Kingsroad,” Tyrion says. “Not much hope of hiding anywhere on Westeros, either. You’re very recognisable – a one-handed man and a very tall woman - you don’t exactly blend in.”

 “Would your sister help you?” asked Jon Snow. “She’s out there, or her army is …”

Both Tyrion and Jaime burst out laughing.

“Confess to Cersei I got a child on Brienne? The Mountain would flay me, slowly, for Qyburn’s amusement.”

“It’s really true, then?” Jon Snow looks at Jaime curiously, though without enmity. “You really did fuck your sister?”

“I am every bit the abomination they say,” Jaime tells him.

Jon looks as though he wants to say more, ask him something, maybe, but doesn’t.

“So, escape is out,” Tyrion says. “And so is appealing to our sweet sister. What else?”

All three of them fall silent for quite some time. Tyrion drinks. Jon Snow broods. Jaime fidgets.

“Well, there is always _one_ more idea,” Tyrion says, between gulps.

“No,” says Jon Snow.

“No?” asks Tyrion. Something akin to an amused smirk dances across his face, for the briefest of seconds. Jaime doubts Jon Snow even spotted it.

“We shouldn’t even be talking about it,” says the King in the North.

“We’re not. But you’re here, aren’t you,” says Tyrion. “In a room with a Kingslayer. You came here with this information of your own free will. Don’t tell me you haven’t already guessed it might come to talking about it.”

“That’s not who I am.”

“It’s who everybody is when it comes down to it,” Jaime says. He holds the King in the North’s eyes.

“She’s my … we …” The agony is plain on his face.

“I know,” says Tyrion.

“I love her.”

Jaime laughs a dry laugh. He’s been there – for most of his life. He let a monster go unchecked because of love, he became a monster himself because of love. Jon, it seems, has come to his senses much, much earlier. “The things I do for love …” he mutters.

“It’s not even possible,” Jon says. “She has Dothraki, she has Unsullied. She has Ser Jorah sewn to her hip. Even trying would be suicide.”

“Yes indeed,” says Tyrion. “Being a Kingslayer is not for the faint of heart, as my brother can attest. Best not to do it so … _openly_.”

“An assasination?”

“Nothing so bold as that, nothing so full of intrigue.”

Jaime sits forward. Jon Snow moves closer. Tyrion pours himself some more wine.

“If we _were_ talking about it, I would suggest that the best way would be to do it cleanly. Legitimately. As she tried to do for my brother and goodsister - a good, honourable death on the battlefield.”

Jaime and Jon look at each other. Both look confused.

“On the battlefield?” asks Jaime.

“She’ll be on a dragon!” says Jon.

“Cersei has scorpions, does she not?”

This was not getting any clearer.

“Those scorpions are a shot in the dark, at best,” says Jaime. “Bronn was lucky that day – and he only winged the beast.”

“Bronn was shooting under fire. Chaos and smoke and death and Dothraki all around him. Yes?”

“Yes,” Jaime concedes.

“And he didn’t know where Daenerys was, or what she was going to do. But you _do_ know. She’ll be emerging from the crypts.”

“Yes …”

“So what would stop you sneaking out of your camp in the night and infiltrating Cersei’s? Getting to a scorpion – aiming it right where you know Daenerys will come out of the crypts? You could hit her before she got close.”

Jaime takes a breath. Waits for the objections to form in his mind. Nothing does. It would be tricky, leaving the camp undetected. Sneaking into Cersei’s, making sure he’s not spotted or recognised. Locating the scorpions, finding out how they are guarded, inserting himself into place near one.

Tricky, but not impossible. Far from impossible.

He looks to Jon – the King in the North gapes too – his eyes are so wide, so black. So very, very black.

“I couldn’t shoot the scorpion with one hand,” Jaime says. The only credible objection he can think of.

“Brienne could,” says Tyrion.

“No,” says Jaime before he can stop himself. “Not Brienne.”

“Not Brienne?”

“If we should be caught … by Cersei … by our own people …”

Tyrion nods. “Someone else then, a loyal man.”

“Podrick,” says Jaime.

“Is he up to that?”

“Qyburn made those scorpions so they could be fired by anyone – a common footsoldier. I could aim it, Podrick could shoot it.”

“Pod is a good man. He would look after you on the battlefield.”

“Brienne has trained him well.”

“Brienne …” says Tyrion. “How could you keep her away? She wouldn’t let you do this alone, you know that. What would you do? Knock her out? Tie her up in your tent?”

Jaime can’t help but smirk at the thought, though he doubts in all honesty he could overpower her. “Maybe!”

“Daenerys may yet see sense,” says Jon Snow quietly. “She’s not a monster.”

Several objections form immediately on Jaime’s tongue, but he manages to swallow them when he sees the piercing look Tyrion shoots at him.

“Talk to her again,” Tyrion tells Jon Snow gently. “See if she will heed your counsel. Let us know on the morrow if you are successful.”

“I shall,” Jon Snow says.

He gets up, offering short, sad nods to each of the Lannister brothers. “I should take my leave, “ he says. “I was expected in her chambers some time ago.”

Jaime gets up too, and bids goodnight to both his brother and the King in the North as well.

Tyrion says “Sleep well,” as he leaves, just as he did when they were boys, but Jaime already knows he won’t.

He sneaks back into his cramped chambers, where the candles have gone out and the fire is dying. He stokes the hearth and puts some more wood on before stripping himself off for bed.

Brienne is asleep with Renly beside her in the bed, suckling at her teat in his sleep. Her bright blonde hair lies ratty and tangled on her pillow, and she’s snoring loudly. Jaime slides beneath the sheets and curls around them both, nuzzling Brienne’s warm shoulder with his lips, stroking Renly’s little cheek. All thoughts of his earlier promise, all thoughts of ravishing her are gone.

He just wants to hold her, just wants to be held by her.

They have a few hours, a day at best, before this ends. The warmth of this bed, the warmth of her touch, the sweet embrace of her love.

Then they will be sent out to that battlefield to die, where he knows, he _knows_ he will have to kill another Targaryen, or lose everything.

He holds Brienne until dawn, breathing her scent, kissing her skin, unable to sleep. As the first hint of light makes its way over the horizon, he wakes her with a gentle kiss and tells her they must dress to meet with the Queen.

Brienne gets up with a sleepy groan, looking ugly and mussed, but unbearably cute. She uses the privy and then returns, padding across the floor to wash naked at the bowl. He watches her with loving eyes, in love with every movement that she makes. He cradles Renly against his chest. Renly snuffles quietly, looking up at Jaime with serious eyes and chewing on his fist.

“So what did Tyrion need of you?” Brienne asks as she splashes the sleep from her face. “Last night?”

“Oh, twas just the battle plans,” he says with a shrug. “They were predictably shit.”

She turns around, her face wet and naked and cold. She looks at him, and her eyes are ice blue in the dawn light from the small window. “How so?”

He shrugs again. “Shit. Immature, inexperienced – the Golden Company would have had us for breakfast and Winterfell for luncheon. Don’t worry, my Lady. Tyrion and I have sorted them well enough.”

She nods, but she is silent, and her eyes don’t leave his for a long moment. _She knows_ , he thinks. She knows he does not speak the truth.

If she does, she doesn’t push it. She dresses herself, dons gloves and cloak and Oathkeeper, and takes Renly while Jaime dresses. He’s pulling on his boots when Tyrion comes for them, looking sombre at the door in a long black cloak and breeches.

Brienne is jittery, eyes flicking from Jaime to Tyrion and back again, her mouth set in a tight line. They take a quiet route this morning, through the kitchens, so the Battleborn is accosted by fewer passers-by. Tyrion looks almost guilty when they are stopped by a cook who wants to pinch Renly’s little cheek – he is clearly thinking what Jaime is thinking. Picturing Renly in Daenerys’ arms, being flocked around by the common people of Winterfell, taking their adoration, their adulation. Taking Renly’s love, as well, being his mother. Seeing his first tooth, his first steps, hearing his first words while Jaime and Brienne mouldered in their graves.

The thoughts make Jaime’s missing sword hand itch. Makes him want to run, to scream his throat hoarse, to burn this castle to the ground. It makes him want to grab Daenerys by the throat, beat her face bloody, run his sword through her bowels and tear her flesh with his teeth. No one touches his family. No one. _No one._

He can see himself already, disguised on the battlefield in the early morning snow, hunched behind the sharp black mass of the scorpion. Waiting. Waiting.

He knows now. He has no doubt. Nothing will give him greater pleasure than to loose that bolt.

Well, ordering Podrick to do it, anyway.

The meeting goes as predicted – they listen to the battle plans, and accept their orders. Jaime notes that Daenerys doesn’t mention how many men will be stationed at any one point on the field, however, but when his eyes meet Jon Snow’s across the table, the King in the North responds with a short, sharp shake of his head.

So much for Daenerys not being a monster.

Jaime fears Brienne will notice the omission and ask for herself, but fortunately Renly fusses, bawling loudly and refusing her breast. He screams himself red over most of the discussion, despite her and then Jaime’s attempts to calm him. In the end, the fuss is revealed to be about wind – Brienne rubs Renly’s little back and he burps noisily and thankfully as Ser Jorah speaks about the location of the elephants.

Jon Snow reveals that the tunnel from the Winterfell crypt onto the hillside has been completed, and that the camp is set up, provisioned and is now mostly manned. The Golden Company are coming up the Kingsroad hard – they have around a day before they are at the field they have chosen for the battle.

The King in the North looks Jaime in the eye and tells him that he and Brienne will have to be in camp tonight. The feint will take place just before dawn – Daenerys and Drogon will attack as the sun rises over the walls of Winterfell.

Jaime swallows, and nods. Brienne nods too, but her eyes are on Renly. She may want to get back to battle, back to her life as a warrior and protector of the realm, but he knows how difficult it will be to leave their babe with the wet nurse. Going into battle has never had such high stakes for her before.

 _Higher than she knows_ , Jaime thinks with a pang.

They will leave Winterfell tonight, at dusk. Jaime is pleased – this will give him ample time to leave their camp and sneak into Cersei’s. Surreptitiously replace whoever mans the scorpion.

The meeting wraps up with some goodbyes and good lucks. Daenerys watches Jaime and Brienne with dark, cold eyes as they take their leave. Jaime’s hand is a tight fist beneath his cloak.

“We should train,” Brienne suggests as they leave the solar. He notices that her hands are shaking. Her voice wavers a little.

Part of him wants to say no, wants to take her back to their room and hold her, naked, for as long and as hard as he can before nightfall, but he can see that she needs this. He can tell she’s terrified – terrified about the fact she’s terrified – her life has never meant so much to her before. She needs to focus on what she knows, sword and shield and footwork.

He nods and smiles, and they make their way down to the training yard. With so many soldiers out already in the camp, it’s almost deserted. They don’t bother to go back to their room for armour.

He unbuckles Widow’s Wail as she hands Renly to Podrick – the babe sleeps peacefully now after his enormous burp. A wildling man comes over almost immediately, rubbing Renly’s head with a fat, calloused hand. Jaime resists the urge to tell him to fuck off.

Jaime passes a training sword to Brienne, holding his own in his clumsy, hopeless left hand. She takes off her cloak, and puts Oathkeeper next to Widow’s Wail against the stable wall. Then she’s all business - turning back straight away to circle him in the snow and mud.

She lunges – but he reads it in her eyes before she moves and dodges her. She’s learned not to grimace now, but she always narrows her eyes a little. She slashes at him on her backstep too – but he knows this move. Parries her.

She circles him again. Her top lip curled slightly. Boots sliding in the mud.

He lunges first this time, hoping to catch her unawares, but his hand, his arm, the whole left side of his body, is clumsy and unresponsive, and she spots him coming a mile off. She steps between his legs, catches his sword with a clash of her own, and trips him on his backside in the mud.

It smarts – his arse is cold and wet and stinging from slapping into the ground, but he jumps back to his feet and starts again.

Her eyes are wild – normally there’s fire, there’s passion, there’s life when she is fighting, but right now he only sees fear. Desperation.

“Don’t go,” he says, and lunges again.

She catches his thrust easily, pushes him back hard, enough to make him stagger.

“Don’t go?” she pants.

“Stay here.” He pushes back against her parry, the training swords scraping against each other in a scream of metal. “With Renly.”

“Refuse orders?” Her lip curls into a snarl. “No.” Pushes hard against his sword with hers.

“I don’t need you,” he growls, leaning into his sword with all his weight, surprised and satisfied when she is forced to take a backward step.

“Really,” she says, heavily. “Going to fight by yourself, are you?”

“It’s only a fucking feint,” he grunts, trying to kick her knee and missing.

She twists away, loosing her sword and raining down a huge, battering overhead slash that he only just catches. “Then you’d best hope Cersei has an army of eight-year-old boys.”

She sticks an elbow in his chest that knocks the air out of him, then trips him again. This time, he lands on his face. The hilt of the training sword digs painfully into his ribs.

He gets to his feet, rubbing what will no doubt be an ugly bruise in a couple of hours.

She comes at him immediately, and he barely has a chance to lift his sword to meet hers. “You’ll die out there on your own, Jaime. Against the very first mercenary you fight.”

“Oh, I think you underestimate me, wench.” He swings at her again, but she catches him in an easy parry.

“Do I?” she swings and swings and swings again, and Jaime realises just how much she usually holds back when they are training. Even more than she does with Podrick.

He catches the first two blows, and almost has the third, but his instincts are wrong and he steps to his right when he should have gone left, and his sword is almost jarred from his hand. Her fourth blow catches him hard, on the soft spot between his shoulder and neck, and he knows he’d be dead, very dead, his blood pumping hot and sweet down his chest right now, if that had been an edged weapon. It still hurts like seven hells though – he yells in pain and curses at her.

“Is that what you _want_?” she screams. “You want to die?”

She comes at him again without pause, stepping into his space and sweeping his attempt at a blow aside as though it were nothing more than an irritating insect. Stabs the training sword into his belly, slashing upwards as if to spill his guts on his feet. Dead again.

“Is that what this is about?” she asks again. “Dying in battle against Cersei? Some sort of stupid, honourable redemption?”

This time she pivots, her sword swinging high. She’s fast – far too fast for him to stop, only this time, she stops herself, the dull edge of the sword just touching the skin on his neck. It was a blow that would have decapitated him.

“Well fuck your honour!” she shouts. Right in his face. “Fuck your redemption! A dead husband and father are no good to us. I _need_ you, Jaime. Renly needs _you_!”

She comes at him again, but this time she doesn’t get close. Her sword hand falters, her fingers going limp. Her face crumples into an unsightly grimace.

She sobs, and it’s the ugliest sound he’s ever heard, like a wounded, dying animal. Podrick’s eyes, carefully averted during their spat, go wide.

Shame floods Jaime. He tries to reach for her. “Brienne …”

She turns away. Both hands in fists. Walks towards Pod. Towards Renly.

Jaime reaches behind him, groping for Widow’s Wail. His hand, ever unreliable, closes around Oathkeeper instead.

Before he’s had a chance to think, before he’s had a chance to register what he’s doing, he’s pulled it from its sheath. It feels good in his hand, alive with purpose, alive with something hard, implacable. He understands why Brienne is so unstoppable when she holds it. It feels like holding Tywin Lannister.

He steps behind her, just as she reaches her arms out to take Renly from Podrick. Drives Oathkeeper down in a vicious stab.

He feels it, feels every inch of that Valyrian steel, feels it as it bites through the thick leather of her boot, through the soft leather of her breeches, into the yielding meat and muscle of her calf. He drives it deep, deep enough to maim her for a week, but little more. Deep enough that she will be too injured to leave for camp tonight.

Her cry hurts Jaime more than anything – the pain, the surprise, the _shock_. She falls to the ground, grabbing for her leg, twisting to see her assailant, seeing Jaime. Seeing Oathkeeper.

“Renly needs you _more_ ,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The things he does for love ....
> 
> Anyway, just want to say an extra special thanks to CaptainTarthister this week. She has helped me immensely with something that became known as the Podrickian knot, and it totally stalled production. She stayed up late, she talked me through things, she debated, she encouraged, and we untangled it. Seriously, someone give GRRM this woman's phone number. She's a peach.


	10. Brienne IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne deals with the aftermath of Jaime's actions.

Renly cries. Podrick jiggles him, cuddles him, sings to him in a surprisingly melodious voice, but it does no good. The babe wants his mother.

Brienne lies on her belly on the bed in the maester’s chamber, hands clamped in fists on the blankets, biting her lower lip as hard as she can to keep from crying herself. Samwell Tarly probes the wound on the back of her leg with gentle fingers, but they feel like white hot metal.

“How bad is it?” she manages. Sweat beading on her forehead.

Tarly is smiling, which gives her hope, but the laugh he gives is a bit nervous, which doesn’t. “I’ve seen worse,” he says. “I can stitch it, wash it out with some boiling wine. You’ll be fine.”

“Tonight? I have to leave for the war camp.”

“No. Oh no, not tonight. A week or so, maybe.”

“There’s a battle in the morning!”

“You won’t be fit for it I’m afraid, my Lady. I won’t be able to let you go out there tonight.”

“I _have_ to!”

“I’m sorry. Jon says no one is to go out there who isn’t perfectly fit for battle. You’re going to be walking with a limp for a while, and that’s without the risk of corruption.”

She curses. Tears spring to her eyes again, and this time they are not from the pain.

“How did you do it?” Tarly asks.

“Training,” she says. “A stupid accident – I stabbed myself.”

“On the back of your leg?”

“I _fell_ ,” she says irritably. She does not like being questioned on her word.

“Ah well,” Tarly says cheerily. “These things happen. I’ll just get some more wine from storage, and then we can start getting you patched up.”

She nods. He leaves, and she rolls over awkwardly, reaching her arms out to take the still-screaming Renly from Podrick. Smelling her familiar smell, the babe roots immediately for her breast, which is beneath two layers of leather and her twisted cloak.

“Help me, Podrick,” she barks, and he leaps into action on a reflex, unlacing her tunic for her.

“My Lady,” he says softly, so softly she can barely hear him over Renly. “Why didn’t you tell Sam what Ser Jaime did?”

“No,” she says.

“He attacked you.”

“No he didn’t.”

“He did, my Lady. I _saw_.”

“It was an accident, Pod.”

She finally manages to get Renly to her breast, and he latches on with a grateful snuffle, sucking frantically.

“It wasn’t an accident. My Lady – “

“Be silent!” she snaps. “If anyone hears of this they will pack him off to the dungeon again, do you understand?”

“Well maybe that’s where he should be …”

“No! _No_ …”

“My Lady, he _stabbed_ you. That is not the action of a man who cares for you.”

Brienne swallows. “Ser Jaime is desperate. It was battle-fear, the fear of leaving Renly an orphan. It was misguided, and rash, but he did not do it to hurt me.”

Podrick opens his mouth to speak again, but Samwell Tarly returns, a skin of wine in his meaty hands.

“Here we are!” he says cheerily.

Podrick shakes his head, his mouth tight. He turns and leaves, without another word, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Brienne stares after him in shock. She’s never seen him like that before, not _angry_. She’s been snappy, rude, irritable and even aggressive with him in their time together, and she has never known him to be anything but affable and grateful.

Tarly whistles to himself as he sets about boiling the wine. Renly suckles hungrily. Brienne looks at her bleeding leg miserably.

She doesn’t know where Jaime is – after he had stabbed her it all got a little confusing. She remembers screaming at him not to touch her, refusing to let him accompany her to the maester, refusing to let him take Renly from Podrick. But she doesn’t remember him leaving, doesn’t know where he went.

He’s condemned himself to death on the morrow, she knows that. She thinks he knows it too – she illustrated it quite comprehensively for him before he stabbed her.

But what she doesn’t understand is _why_. The battle plan is solid – he and Tyrion worked on it last night to ensure that. They are leading the feint, not even forming a part of the main assault. Together, they had an excellent chance of survival. Apart, with her injured, Jaime has _none_.

A bitter, dark part of her wonders if that was the point – if at some stage during his long imprisonment Jaime had resolved that he would end his life, and this was his chosen method. Dying honourably in battle against his sister would be a redemption of sorts, after all.

But she doesn’t believe it. She thinks of his face at the window, when she was on the battlements with Tyrion, his hand pressed to the glass and his face so _longing._ She thinks of him coming to the door on the morning of the wedding, of the tears coursing down his face, of the kiss he had laid on her lips as soon as he’d seen her. She thinks of the look on his face when he had held Renly for the first time, the look on his face when he had held _her_.

Jaime doesn’t want to die, she is sure of it.

She does not get another chance to muse on it, however, as Samwell Tarly approaches the bed with the boiling wine and a tray of terrifying instruments. He holds out a small vial to her, unstoppers it with his thumb.

“Milk of the poppy,” he says gently. “Just a small dose, because you’re nursing. Shouldn’t do anything more than make you sleepy.”

Brienne thinks about refusing, but she’s miserable and tired with the pain, and she can’t face any more. She swallows the contents of the vial gratefully and finishes Renly’s feed while she waits for it to take full effect. By the time Tarly takes her sleeping babe from her arms and places him a makeshift cradle he’s made from a box, she’s drifting away, and nothing matters any more.

She feels the pain as he cleans and stitches her, but it’s far away, not part of her at all. She can feel him as he binds her wound too, softly singing to himself, but it doesn’t matter. It will be fine. Everything will be fine.

She jerks awake some time later, from a horrible, clawing dream about Jaime. The dream was formless – full of faces and noises, but nothing coherent. Screaming. Battle. The faces of the dead. Jaime, his eyes bright blue and Oathkeeper in his hand, afire. Cersei, with a knife held in her perfect white teeth. Dragonfire. A crying baby.

The crying baby is Renly – he is in Tarly’s arms beside the bed, clearly hungry.

“Sorry, I didn’t want him to wake you,” he explains. “He slept well though!”

Her throat feels thick, and she can’t find her voice, so she motions with her hands and he passes Renly to her.

She notices from the window set high in the wall that it has grown dark outside. So dark that Tarly has lit the candles.

“Ser Jaime was here,” he says softly as she latches Renly on.

“When?” she manages. Her mouth numb and her tongue heavy.

“Not so long ago,” he says. “He was about to gather his men to leave for the camp. I think he wanted to say goodbye.”

Brienne gets up.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Tarly asks, bewildered but gentle. “You shouldn’t get up just yet.”

“I have to go,” she tells him. Never mind the pain, never mind the numbness, never mind her tattered breeches and ruined boot. Never mind the fact she is unsteady on her feet and that she’s feeding a baby. Never mind that Jaime’s responsible for all of those things. She has to see him.

“You probably shouldn’t,” Tarly says nervously.

“My husband is about to leave for battle. I think that maybe I _should._ ”

“Oh. Yes – you’re right, of course. Let me help you then?”

“Don’t let me fall,” she says.

Gallantly, he offers her his arm, which she takes. He’s surprisingly strong.

As fast as she is able, she hobbles out of the maester’s chambers. Of course, everyone who sees her wants to touch Renly, wants to see him, wants to press things into his hands. She pushes through as politely as she can, hoping against hope that Jaime hasn’t left yet.

Tarly helps her through the corridors, and they emerge on the upper balcony of Winterfell’s main courtyard. It’s busy, crowded with hundreds of men preparing to leave for the war camp – Jaime’s host, she thinks. Brienne’s eyes search frantically for her husband’s familiar figure. Please don’t let him have left yet. Please. _Please._

Then she sees him. He’s by the gates, astride his horse – a beautiful white as always. He’s pointing at something, shouting over to get someone’s attention. He’s dressed in mismatched armour, Widow’s Wail at his hip.

“Jaime!” she shouts, before she can stop herself. Her voice echoes across the courtyard, and everyone turns to look at her. Including Jaime.

He gets off his horse and runs to her, pushing men aside in his haste. Then, halfway up the stairs, he sees her ruined breeches and seems to remember that he stabbed her. “Are – are you all right?”

She punches him. Hard, in the mouth, before she’s even thought about it. He’s not expecting it, and she knocks him on his arse and down the stairs. He falls back down to the courtyard, much to the amusement of his men. He sits on his arse in a puddle, blinking.

“Fuck you, Jaime,” she yells. “Going into battle is _my_ choice. _Mine_. It has always been my choice, and being your wife does not change that!”

He gets up, brushes himself down. Adjusts his breastplate, which has slipped. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You think you need to protect me?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why?”

He looks at his boots. “A baby needs his mother.”

“He needs his father, too.”

Jaime looks guilty. He takes her arm, trying to pull her under the stairs so they can talk in private. She shakes him off.

“Please – don’t hate me. Don’t be angry with me. Not now.”

“I _am_ angry with you, Jaime! Together we would have survived, Apart …”

“You’re right. I know. It was a shitty thing to do and I hate myself for doing it. I panicked. I panicked and I hurt you and I’m so, so sorry.”

He reaches out to touch her face. She pulls away, but his fingers follow. He strokes her cheek with his knuckles, softly. So softly.

“Do not ever … _ever_ do it again,” she says.

“I swear I will not, my lady.”

He cups her face. Strokes her cheek with his thumb. His eyes are wet, drinking her in.

“I don’t want to leave like this,” he whispers. “Not angry. We wasted so much time being angry at each other.”

He leans up and kisses her, a sweet, soft kiss. She returns it, and the feelings well up in her chest like a hotspring, she can’t turn them off. They kiss hard, tangling tongues until they are breathless, until behind him, his men let out a ribald cheer.

Jaime grins against her mouth, and kisses her again, before moving to take Renly from Sam Tarly’s arms. He offers Brienne his arm, and she leans on him with her head against his as they go over to his horse. Together. She can’t help but feel a horrible pang of fear that this is the last time they will be together as a family until they are reunited by the Stranger.

She pushes it down. She can already see that he has Podrick. Podrick is able, a competent swordsman, and he is loyal. He will guard Jaime’s back faithfully.

He looks at her now, from the horse beside Jaime’s, a small smile on his round face.

“Are you all right, Podrick?” she asks him.

“Yes, my Lady,” he replies. “If you are.”

“I am.”

“May I say, too, my Lady, that that was an excellent punch. Well placed.”

“Thank you, Podrick. Well deserved, too, I thought.”

“Indeed.”

Jaime is kissing Renly now, soft presses of his lips on that downy-soft head. He takes hold of one of his tiny hands, and presses it against his breastplate.

“Let’s hope you truly are the boon they say you are, my dear little Battleborn,” Brienne hears him whisper. “Your father is in need of your magic this night.”

Then he kisses her again, a hard, desperate kiss full of the taste of fear. She clings to him, not wanting this to be it, not wanting this to truly be goodbye.

He pulls away, his eyes full. He mounts his horse and leans down again, pressing another kiss to her mouth, her cheek, her ear. And then, when his lips are buried there, he whispers “Brienne, promise me. If I die, beware the dragon queen. Leave Winterfell as soon as you can, and as quietly as you can. All right?”

He sits up, and she looks at him, confusion all over her face. He presses a finger to her lips to quiet her. Shouts to his men that they are leaving.

They group up with him – horses, footmen, spearmen. But only about a third of the men in the courtyard. An icy fist grips Brienne’s heart.

“Jaime,” she says. “Where are the rest of your forces?”

“Oh,” he says. “They left earlier.”

“Without their commander? Without you?”

“Ser Jorah had need of them at the camp,” he says with a wave of his golden hand.

That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem right at all. All the hairs on the back of Brienne’s neck stand up.

But he gives her no more chance to ask – he rides off through the gates of Winterfell, his small host at his back. She watches him as he goes, perfect and beautiful on his white horse.

Jaime Lannister. Jaime Lannister, her husband.

He turns and waves once, sadly, over his shoulder. She waves back, and watches him until he disappears over the hillside, wondering desperately if this is the last time she will see him alive.

The column of men following him dwindles, and then disappears. She estimates less than a hundred accompanied him to the camp this night.

The words he had whispered in her ear while kissing her, too. Beware the dragon queen? Leave Winterfell? No, she determines. Nothing about this feels right at all.

Samwell Tarly is still there, and he offers her his arm again, but she declines.

Instead, she limps through the castle with Renly in her arms, still in pain, but the worst of it abated by the milk of the poppy still in her system.

She finds Tyrion outside the door to his chambers, bidding farewell to Ser Davos.

“Ah,” he says as he sees her approach. “Tis my goodsister. I had thought you would have left for the war camp by now.”

“I would speak with you,” she says. A glare at the Onion Knight.

“Of course. Farewell, Ser Davos, I hope the meeting with our Queen goes well. I shall join you shortly in the solar once I have finished with these papers.”

Ser Davos nods and departs, trying to smile at Brienne. She does not return it, not to a foul supporter of blood magic such as he.

“Come inside,” says Tyrion. Then he notices her limp. “You are injured, my Lady?”

“Jaime stabbed me in the leg with my own sword.”

“What? Why?”

“I believe so that I would not be able to accompany him into battle.”

“Oh.” He does not sound entirely surprised. “He has gone, then.”

“He has, my Lord. But with a host of less than a hundred men at his back.”

Tyrion pours himself some wine.

“Why so few? Were we to die out there? Was the feint to be for naught?”

“Brienne …”

“What? What did you and Jaime plot last night?”

“It’s under control. I know it is hard for you to believe that –“

“Hard? Tis impossible! Jaime has no right hand and less than a hundred men. How is he meant to be effective on the battlefield?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Not at this moment, no, my Lord! I have been lied to, deceived. Injured so that I will not participate. It seems very clear that neither you nor Jaime trust _me_.”

Tyrion looks guiltily into his wine. “There is a plan …”

“What is this plan?”

“My lady …”

“What is this plan? How can it possibly mean that Jaime will come back alive with only a hundred men at his back? And why did he tell me to flee if he dies?”

“He told you to do that?”

“Yes! He said to beware the dragon queen, and to leave Winterfell as quick and quiet as I am able. Why?”

“Brienne …”

“No! You will tell me, my Lord. If I am expected to quietly sacrifice the man I love, and to flee with my baby on the morrow, I should at least know why, should I not?”

He sighs. Draws close to her and lowers his voice. “All right. Listen. I will tell you the plan. You have less cause to worry than you think. Jaime will not be on the battlefield at all, Brienne. By the time the feint begins, he and Podrick will be with the Golden Company.”

Brienne feels the colour drain from her face. “With – with Cersei?”

“No. Not with Cersei. They are sneaking amongst them, to the scorpions.”

“They plan to disable them?”

“No. To use one.”

“What for?”

Tyrion closes his eyes. Takes a long, long drink. “He’s going to assassinate Daenerys.”

Brienne takes a step backwards. Her mouth falls open, her eyes go wide. Her body feels bloodless and cold. “Wh-what?”

“I know. It sounds drastic. Insane, even. But we have come to believe that Daenerys is not the right person to rule Westeros. That she is not the right person to have dragons, or to wield that sort of power over everyone else.”

“No … no, you can’t let him do that. Not again. They’ll hang him, the Dothraki will kill him, the Unsullied …”

“She will die on the battlefield, killed by Cersei’s scorpions. No one will even know Jaime was there.”

“Why? What has she done? Do Lannister plots know no bounds? You are her _Hand_ , Tyrion. You are supposed to be loyal!”

“I’m afraid she is as mad as her father, Brienne. As mad as Cersei. In a different way, I grant you, but I’m tired of madness, and I’m tired of having Westeros under its boot.”

“Mad? How?”

 “She has always been … driven by her sense of destiny. Her birthright, the blood magic, the dragons. Lately, this has begun to grow out of control. Building her legacy, her destiny, has become of paramount importance to her. She believes that everything she does, every whim she has, is the hand of fate and destiny at work. Recently, these whims have proved deadly.”

“How so?”

“It was Daenerys who wanted to send Jaime, and you, out onto the battlefield with less than a hundred men. To die.”

“Deliberately?”

“Very much so.”

“Why?”

“Because she is barren, and because she has no one to pass this legacy of hers on to, no one to ride her dragons after her. And because I have invested your child with a sense of destiny to rival her own.”

“My … my child?”

“She planned to have you and Jaime die tomorrow so that she might take on Renly as her own son and heir.”

Brienne gasps again. Arms tightening unconsciously around Renly’s sleeping form. “Renly?” she gasps. “She would take our babe for her own?”

“Indeed. As I said … madness.”

“She would have had me and Jaime cut down senselessly on the battlefield, after everything we have contributed, everything we have fought for?”

“Yes.”

“Where is her honour?”

“Honour? Daenerys is a Targaryen. She only believes in destiny.”

“Destiny …” the word is heavy in Brienne’s mouth. Hot too, like a lump of coal. She feels that heat spreading down her throat, into her chest, where it burns. It _burns_.

She turns on her heel and leaves Tyrion’s chambers.

Outside, Winterfell _burns_ too. Every stone, every person. Everything she looks at burns her black, to her bones. Winterfell has taken everything she is – it’s taken Brienne of Tarth and burned her right away.

Brienne walks. The air is cold, but braziers burn bright in the corridors, on the battlements. They burn in the courtyard, in the halls, in the barracks and the stables. They burn in the towers, in the chambers of the lords and the ladies, in the small rooms of the smallfolk and the servants.

Brienne goes back to her dark room. Their room. The fire isn’t lit, and the candles burn low, guttering from a lack of wax, dim and golden.

She puts Renly on the bed – his wide soft eyes gilded by the candlelight, and his hair too. His skin as gold as Jaime’s.

She takes off her boots, takes off her breeches, crimson with her blood. Undoes her tunic, drops it to the floor. She stands there naked, freezing cold, looking at herself in the looking glass.

Brienne of Tarth. Brienne of Tarth.

The Maid, The Beauty. The wench. Brienne the Blue, the Kingsguard, the woman of honour. The woman of her word. The Oathkeeper.

She’s not there.

She dresses again. Smallclothes. Tunic. Breeches. Hauberk.

Breastplate. Shoulderguards. Gloves. Swordbelt.

Oathkeeper. _Oathkeeper._

She looks in the glass again, and sees herself. Her hair as golden as Renly’s, her eyes as sharp as a knife. The Lion at her belt.

She gathers Renly in her arms – he is as silent as she. She leaves their room and walks through the silent corridor outside.

Snow falls.

She pictures the battlefield tomorrow – the crimson of the Lannister tents set stark against the pure white snow, the crimson of their cloaks, their shields. The ripple of the lions on the flags. The crimson of the blood as it’s drunk by the snow.

Jaime’s blood. The gold of his hair, the green of his eyes, dimming, dying, dead.

She is Jaime. Sitting on top of his white horse, his jaw set and his shoulders square. His head high and proud and Lannister. _Lannister_.

She’s Cersei – cold and hard, Drowned in grief and bitter with loss. Sadistic, wicked – wildfire as a woman.

She is Tywin too, as she nods to the guards, the expressionless Unsullied at the foot of the stairs. Tywin Lannister, his sword in her hand as she mounts the steps to the solar. His unforgiving eyes burn cold and green in her head. Tywin Lannister, ending a house. Burning it to the ground.

Every footstep on the stairs sounds like the Rains of Castamere.

Outside the door, two Dothraki. The bloodriders. She walks past them, the sword in her hand, and they don’t see it. They don’t stop her. It truly is a magic sword, imbued with the heart of Tywin Lannister. Forged at his command.

Beyond, in the solar, the candlelight dances rich and gold on the stone of the walls, on the rough wood of the table. Daenerys Targaryen is at the other end, leaning over the map with her arms outstretched, her head bent low. Her hair bright white in the light. She is flanked by Jon Snow and Davos Seaworth, one at each of her shoulders.

Brienne crosses the room in three strides, before any of them has registered her presence.

Daenerys looks at her – looks _up_ at her, she’s no taller than Brienne’s ribcage – and there is something in her eyes that Brienne takes a second to read.

“Lady Tarth?” she says.

“Lady Lannister,” Brienne replies. And plunges Oathkeeper into the dragon queen’s chest.

She drives it deep, up to the hilt, with the strongest thrust she can ever remember making as a swordswoman. It sinks easily through Daenerys’ soft, diaphanous gown, through the soft meat of her breast, and into the dragon queen’s heart. There is a horrible crack and splinter of ribs, and then the dragon queen tries to suck a bubbling breath in through ruined lungs, but only once.

She sinks to the floor, sliding slowly off Oathkeeper’s beautiful blade. Her eyes, dimming already, locked on Brienne’s.

She didn’t expect to die, Brienne realises, her eyes are full of horror and terror and shock. Brienne thinks of Jaime, in the baths at Harrenhal. Telling her the same about Aerys – thinking he would rise again as a dragon, turn his enemies to ash.

She slits Daenerys’ throat to make sure that doesn’t happen.

She hears Jon Snow gasp, spins to him, her blade up, dripping with Targaryen blood.

_That’s where Ned Stark found me._

He lifts his hands. He’s unarmed. Shaking. But his eyes are strong. Unafraid.

“Your husband was meant to do that,” he says. “On the battlefield.”

“Y-you know?”

“I told Tyrion.”

“Jaime … I have to get him back.”

“You need to get out of the castle,” he says. “The Dothraki, the bloodriders … they’ll want to avenge her.”

She sheathes her sword. “I’ll run. I’ll get Jaime, we’ll run.”

“Get a ship to Essos,” says the Onion Knight. “Plenty of places to hide there.”

She nods. Silent. In her arms, Renly wriggles, starting to fuss.

Then suddenly, a crash, far off, a deep boom of fire and impact.

“What was that?” asks Jon.

The door bursts open. Tyrion Lannister rushes in. He’s severely out of breath – he’s obviously run all the way across the castle from his chambers.

“Cersei,” he pants wildly. “She’s attacked the camp! The battle has already started!”

Then he sees Brienne. Jon. Ser Davos. His eyes moving from one to the other.

Then to the crumpled, bloody, brutalised form of Daenerys, lying on the floor at the head of the table.

“Oh,” he says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, many apologies for the delay in getting this chapter up, it's much longer than I would have liked. A sick child is to blame!
> 
> Secondly, I would like to thank CaptainTarthister once again for her help on this chapter, particularly the Podrickian Knot which presented itself here. She's been the lifeblood of this story and there's no way I would have bothered with it if I hadn't had her constant input. So please send her many love vibes, she deserves them all.


	11. Tyrion IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion deals with Brienne's actions.

Tyrion shuts the door. Quickly.

He goes over to the ruined figure of Daenerys Targaryen, lying in a heap of limbs and dress on the floor. The blood is spreading, soaking into the rough wooden legs of the table. Into the soles of Brienne’s boots.

Jon Snow looks white. Ashen, slightly nauseous. His hands grip the edge of the table. Davos Seaworth looks grim and hard.

The Battleborn has started to cry – Brienne bounces and shushes him against her neck.

“This is a problem,” he says to Brienne. “Jaime was supposed to do this.”

“Jaime has already borne the brand of Kingslayer for two decades,” Brienne says. “He should not have had to do it twice.”

“There was a plan,” he admonishes her. “It was not supposed to be an assassination, Brienne. Not a murder. It was a clean death, on the battlefield, remember?”

“Yes,” says Jon. “There are two Dothraki bloodriders outside this door. Two more Unsullied at the bottom of the stairs. Their queen – the woman they followed across a continent – lies murdered in this room. This will not end well.”

“I could care less for how this ends,” Brienne spits. Her blue eyes blaze in the candlelight. “She plotted my murder, Jaime’s murder. She plotted to take our son for her own. That could not stand.”

“Spoken like a true Lannister,” Tyrion says softly.

As she strokes her babe’s soft head, he notices her black leather gloves are speckled with blood. The Battleborn’s cheek is decorated by a thick spatter of gore, too.

“All right,” Jon Snow says. He stands up straight before Brienne, almost level with her shoulder. “Hit me.”

“Hit you?”

“And Ser Davos. Make it look like we put up a fight defending her.”

“You want it to look like you _defended_ her?” Brienne’s mouth is curled into and almost feral snarl. “Are you so craven, Jon Snow? You would conspire to kill a woman, but only if your hands are kept clean of her blood?”

“Craven has nothing to do with it,” Jon Snow says gruffly. “I learned my lesson at the Dragonpit, Lady Lannister. If the Dothraki find out, if the Unsullied find out, they will kill us all and lay waste to the North. There will be nothing and no one to stop the dead marching south.”

“You need them to follow you …” says Tyrion, softly.

“I do. We all do. I need to pick up her mantle, and use it. To save us all.”

Tyrion nods, but Brienne still has a murderous gleam in her eye. She nods, though.

She passes Renly to Tyrion. Clenches her fists.

Jon Snow looks a little nervous. “My sister told me you bested the Hound?”

“I did.”

“Then this will be quite convincing.”

She hits him. On the side of the jaw, with her clenched fist. It’s not a light blow – the King in the North is knocked off his feet. Before he’s had a chance to register the pain, she hits him again, on the other side, and then again square in the nose.

That one makes Tyrion wince – there is a horrible crunch of bone. Jon Snow goes down and stays down, clutching his face in both his hands. He’s not going to be so pretty tomorrow, Tyrion thinks.

Brienne turns to Ser Davos. “You I shall consider a blood debt,” she spits. “For King Renly.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it again. Nods his acceptance. This time, Tyrion turns away. Accidentally looking right into the milky-dead eyes of Daenerys Targaryen.

“Are you coming?” Brienne says, when Ser Davos is unconscious on the map table with a face as bloody as Jon Snow’s. She takes Renly from his arms.

“If the alternative is a punch to the face, then yes.”

She doesn’t smile. Marches to the door without a backward glance. Tyrion follows, stepping over the groaning form of the King in the North.

He follows her out of the solar, past the two Dothraki, who seem unperturbed. Down the stairs, his heart racing and his eyes darting everywhere. Brienne’s footsteps solid and rhythmic and secure. Her strong arms wrapped about her babe, Oathkeeper gleaming at her belt.

They pass the Unsullied. Tyrion nods casually. They don’t nod back.

Outside, the snow falls even thicker now, and the sounds of battle can be heard even at this distance. He sees Brienne’s jaw tighten.

“We don’t have long,” he tells her. She nods.

They head for the courtyard, where the soldiers who have not yet left for the war camp are in chaos. Pushing, shouting, rearing horses. Men riding out with armour half undone. Brienne pushes through the melee with ease, and Tyrion only just manages to keep his feet.

She pulls him into the barracks by the front of his jerkin, rooting through a pile of discarded armour and throwing a breastplate at him.

“My Lady …” he says. Then “ _Brienne.”_

She turns to see him holding it up – it covers him from neck to knees, and he could put it on without undoing the buckles. “Oh,” she says.

“I have my own armour. Back in my chambers.”

She shakes her head. “No time.”

“Perhaps chain mail?” he suggests.

She nods and throws him a mail shirt. He shrugs it on, almost losing his balance from the weight of it. It’s still ridiculously long for him, but at least it’s flexible and he can walk. He finds himself a helmet, discarded on one of the beds, and then an axe on a hook on the wall.

He turns back to Brienne to see that his goodsister has strapped the Battleborn to her chest using several thick swordbelts, and is now attaching a second breastplate to herself, to cover him.

“We need a horse,” she says.

“Supplies too – it’s a two day ride to White Harbour.”

“We’ll have to hunt,” she says as she barges her way back out of the barracks.

“Wine?” he says to her retreating form. “Maybe?”

Outside, she has grabbed the reins of a loose, skittish rounsey, dark in colour and already saddled and packed for camp. He notices a couple of bedrolls and blankets attached to its saddlebags, as well as horse feed and other sundries. No wineskin, he notes with dismay.

She’s up on its back in one swift motion, and holds out a big hand to him. He grasps it with both of his and she pulls him into the saddle in front of her as easily as she would a child.

He’s not exactly secure – without his adapted saddle his legs don’t have nearly enough grip, and he fears that when the horse gets moving properly he won’t be able to hold on. “Don’t let me fall,” he calls to Brienne as they ride out of the gates.

“I won’t,” she assures him. He looks up at her, and her eyes, steel-blue, are locked on the horizon. Towards the camp where Jaime is. Towards their freedom and their future.

They ride hard, and she is true to her word – she does not let him fall. She grips him between her firm thighs, and he has never felt more secure on the back of a horse in his life. He sits there, surrounded by her, by her legs and arms and the scent of her, her leather and her steel and the sound of her breath, her shouts of commands to the horse, and has to admit he is a little aroused.

What must it be like to be fucked by a woman like Brienne? To be overwhelmed by her strength, her body and her passion? To know she could kill you as soon as look at you. The thought passes briefly – it’s entirely inappropriate and more than a little disturbing.

The snow flies hard in their faces as they ride, bitter cold and raging. It crunches, packed hard under the rounsey’s feet but the sturdy horse does not let them down. He is sure-footed and surprisingly swift, carrying both of them and the baby.

They crest the final hill to see the camp in chaos.

Tents are aflame, loose horses running everywhere. Blood, limbs, guts, shit and vomit – most of it Northern. The Golden Company are pressing them hard, and from every direction – with less than half their men on the field it is nothing less than a massacre. The screams are awful, truly blood-curdling.

Behind him, Brienne turns white as she surveys the scene. She must be thinking the same as he – how could Jaime survive this? “Where is he?” she breathes. “Would he already be at the scorpions?”

“I don’t know,” Tyrion admits. “He was to sneak over there at some point during the night. He had no plan as to when, it was meant to be as the moment arose.”

“He could not have long arrived at the camp when Cersei’s forces attacked,” she says. Her voice calm and steady for someone who must be terrified. “I doubt he would have had time.”

He nods in agreement. “He was assigned to the Eastern side of the camp,” he tells her. “By the woods.”

She pulls on the rounsey’s reins to turn him east and pushes him hard again, gripping Tyrion between her thighs once more to ensure that he stays put. Almost immediately, they catch the attention of a mounted knight, dressed in golden armour and Lannister colours. He clocks them, and seeing a woman and a dwarf, thinks them an easy kill. His cloak billows as he rides towards them, the elaborate feathers on his golden helm damp and matted with snow.

“Take the reins,” Brienne commands Tyrion. He grasps them wildly in shaking hands – she draws Oathkeeper from its scabbard. The sword rings like a bell, louder somehow than all the noises of the battle around them. He notices that the blade is still red with Targaryen blood.

“Charge,” she says.

“Charge?”

“Charge!”

“Where?”

“At him!” she hisses. She grabs the reins herself in her left hand and digs her knees in, both to make the horse charge and to keep Tyrion steady in the saddle.

The knight charges too, his gleaming sword also running with much fresher blood. Tyrion notices how beautifully it complements his Lannister cloak, and almost laughs – but then the man is upon them.

Tyrion feels the movement of the man, the swish of his cloak, the hiss of his breath. He can smell his sweat. The press of his bay against their rounsey. But he feels Brienne too, the muscles in her legs, the jerk of her sword arm, the grunt from her mouth, ugly and primal.

She catches the man’s slash easily, and delivers one of her own, high – much higher than the knight was expecting. His arms flail uselessly by his sides and Oathkeeper cuts through his gorget like it is butter. His blood spills in a hot gush from his open throat, running in a hot river down his gleaming golden breastplate, steaming in the frigid air.

He hits the ground with a crunch of bone, jerking and quivering.

Brienne wipes Oathkeeper on her cloak and turns the rounsey back toward the east.

Now they are riding through the thick of it, through mounted knights and leather-clad sellswords. Through fur-clad Dothraki and Unsullied, through Stark men and bannermen, through men fighting and men on fire.

Brienne slashes and hacks her way through them all, screaming and roaring, coated in gore to her elbow, eyes wild and teeth bared, her hot breath smoking from between them.

The sight of her, the magnificent sight of her, all steel and sword and blood and fury, seems to inspire the men, Tyrion notices. He hears some cry out “Battleborn!” as they stream past. Brienne does not seem to hear them. She’s focussed on the next man, the next opponent, the next obstacle between her and Jaime.

She opens a man’s throat, she takes one’s head off. Slashes one across the chest and belly, spilling his guts in a steaming, stinking heap on his feet.

“Jaime!” she starts to shout as they sight the Eastern side of the camp.

But it’s a twisted, blackened ruin – tattered tents still aflame and burnt corpses everywhere. Clearly they were hit the hardest here. The fighting is less here though, probably because there are fewer survivors, Tyrion thinks. He hopes to all the gods that one of these bodies isn’t Jaime’s – they wouldn’t have a hope in all the seven hells of identifying him. What would she do? Would she stay, fighting until they are cut down, to join him in death? Or would she live for her child, run to White Harbour and start a new life with her shattered heart?

The black smoke billows, carrying bits of flaming tent with it in the wind. It’s thick and makes them cough, their eyes water. She pushes the rounsey onward, through it all, screaming Jaime’s name between coughing fits.

Behind him, strapped securely in her extra breastplate, Tyrion hears the Battleborn crying. It’s a chilling sound to hear on the battlefield, desperate and sad. The rounsey is tiring now, responding to Brienne’s commands half-heartedly at best, trying to shy away from the smoke and the smell of death around them.

“Jaime!” she screams, her voice tearing and desperate now.

Someone rides out of the smoke, and she raises her sword arm, but it’s a decapitated corpse on a panicking horse. It thunders past them in a rush of smoke and snow.

She pushes the rounsey on, until they emerge the other side, at the treeline that marks the edge of the camp. Here the smoke is less. Tyrion looks up at her, to see her face, dirty from smoke and streaked with tears.

“He couldn’t have survived that,” she says. Her voice surprisingly strong. “If he was in his tent …”

“Perhaps he was not,” Tyrion says gently. “He may have snuck out already, or been helping his men, or …”

“Perhaps,” she says. But he can see by her face that she has doubts.

“When the attack struck, if he wasn’t killed straight away, what would he have done?”

“If he fought them, he’s dead,” she says. “He has no skill with his left hand – he would not have lasted long.”

“Then let us hope that he ran.”

“You think Jaime would run away?!”

“No. But I think he would make a run for the scorpions. I think he would want to die trying to save your son.”

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, you’re right.”

He sees her scan the horizon, eyes narrowed to help her peer desperately towards the enemy lines through the smoke and the snow. There is little to see that isn’t obscured.

“He wouldn’t run across the open field - how would he have done it? Where would he have gone?” she says. But then answers herself. “Through the trees,” she breathes.

“You believe so?”

She nods. “It would be the safest.”

She pulls the rounsey into the treeline. It’s dark in there, much darker than outside. Only the baleful glow of the burning camp illuminates the snow. They have to move much slower too, to avoid the trees and the roots on the ground.

The Battleborn is quiet now, clearly preferring the gentle sway of the horse beneath him to the pounding stride of the battle. Brienne looks grim.

Suddenly, they come upon a patch of snow in front of them that is darker. Much darker. It spreads out almost to the edge of the trees. It’s blood – Brienne swallows, hard enough that he feels it.

The source is a body. Armour-clad, already half-covered with snow. He’s face-down, but Tyrion can see that his hair is fair. Pale golden in the light from the hundred fires that are their burning camp.

“No …” Brienne slithers down from the rounsey, leaving Tyrion astride him, gripping the reins to hold him still. He watches her limp through the pool of blood, stopping at the side of the body, then falling to her knees.

She reaches out to the body with a trembling hand. Brushes some off the snow off him. Then, her eyes fall on something else, half buried beside him. What is it? From where Tyrion sits, it looks like a rock.

She picks it up. It gleams in the light from the fires. Gold. It’s Jaime’s golden hand.

As quick as she can, she rolls the body over. Collapses on to its chest, her head down.

“Brienne?” he says.

She doesn’t answer. Carefully, he moves the rounsey forward.

She lifts her face, her tear-streaked, weeping face up to look at him.

“It’s not him,” she says. Moves aside to show Tyrion. “But Jaime killed him.”

The man has a ragged open wound across his throat. “How can you tell?”

“It’s a left-handed blow,” she says. “An unskilled one.” She takes the rounsey’s reins and hobbles on. There is a further trail of blood, leading deeper into the wood. It’s a lot. A hell of a lot. Tyrion starts to feel a knot of dread forming in his stomach.

“Jaime?” she calls, but it’s low. Tentative. “Jaime?” A little louder.

Then, suddenly, an answer. “Brienne? Is that you?”

She lets go of the horse. Runs – painfully on her hobbled leg – towards the sound of his voice. Tyrion follows her as quickly as he dares.

He sees the shape of his brother, nothing more than a silhouette, slumped against a tree trunk.

“Jaime …” Brienne falls to her knees in the snow before him. “Are you … are you hurt? There’s so much blood!”

“No,” he hears Jaime reply. “Not me.” He twists around to face the glow from the burning camp, and Tyrion sees that he has something – some _one_ – in his arms.

“Podrick!” Brienne’s cry is agonised, heart-rending.

“He’s gone,” Jaime says. “Just a few moments ago.”

“Oh no …” Tyrion says.

“Idiot boy. He stepped between me and my opponent. Tried to defend me, for your sake.”

“No …” Brienne cries.

“Tyrion?” Jaime says. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Jaime.” He slides off the rounsey very clumsily, landing on his arse in the snow and then almost tripping over his chainmail trying to get up.

“What in all the Seven Hells are you doing? We can’t be out here, Tyrion, this is exactly what Daenerys wants!”

Just then, right on cue, the Battleborn wails from inside Brienne’s breastplate. Jaime’s eyes almost bug out of his head.

“And you brought the _baby?”_

“We have to leave Winterfell,” Brienne says. She is cradling Podrick’s head on her lap now. “We aim to make for White Harbour, run to Essos.”

“No …” groans Jaime. “I thought we discussed this. Daenerys will hunt us down, she will …”

“She’s dead,” Tyrion says. His voice grave and deep in the deep snow of the woods. “By the fair hand of your Lady wife.”

“Brienne?! You – you _killed_ the dragon queen?”

“You do not have the monopoly on regicide, Jaime,” she admonishes. “I think it was more than justified.”

He nods, but his eyes are glued to her, wide, his mouth slightly open. Love and wonder and fascination, in his gaze.

“We need to leave,” Jaime says. “We are not safe here, from Cersei least of all. According to the man I killed she has promised a large bounty to the man who gelds me alive and brings her my cock, my head or my golden hand. Preferably all three.”

“Ouch,” says Tyrion.

“You should hear what she wants to do to _you_.”

“I’d rather not know.”

Just then, from the battlefield, a huge roar. It shakes the trees, making their ears ring. The Battleborn starts to cry again.

“Drogon?” Tyrion whispers. They all look to the sky to see the dragon rise from the Winterfell crypts, a black arc, blacker than the night sky, wings reared and neck arched.

“How?” Brienne breathes. “She’s dead – she was definitely dead!”

Drogon swoops low, low enough that they feel the beat of his wings, even at this distance.

“It’s not her!” Tyrion cries. On his back, his curls blowing in the wind, he sees the beautiful silhouette of Jon Snow. He raises his swordarm, shouting something unintelligible at this distance – Longclaw in his hand.

“How can he ride a dragon?” asks Jaime. “I thought you had to have the blood of Old Valyria?”

“I don’t know …” Tyrion murmurs, watching him. He does cut a majestic figure with his black cloak and his black hair, soaring up into the night sky.

Drogon lets loose an enormous gout of flame from his mouth, engulfing two of Cersei’s scorpions even as they struggle to load.

They can feel the heat of the flames even at this distance, and the screams are horrific. Tyrion wonders if Jon was prepared for that – if he has the fortitude to live with it afterward.

“We should leave,” Jaime says again. “That fire will spread.”

But Tyrion can’t tear his eyes from Jon Snow. He has that feeling, the feeling he had when he first saw Daenerys, the feeling he had when he took the Battleborn on his first tour of the castle battlements. The feeling he always had in the presence of his father.

He watches as the King in the North soars over the heads of the troops, circling and swooping as if he had been born on the saddle of a dragon.

Then, suddenly, he is yanked from his feet by the strong left hand of his brother, and is plonked unceremoniously onto the rounsey’s back once more.

“Are you coming, brother?” asks Jaime.

On the ground, Brienne is burying Podrick as best she can, in a loose mound of snow. It’s horrible, undignified, but it’s the best she can do.

She’s crying openly and noisily when she clambers onto the horse between Jaime and Tyrion.

The rounsey protests at all the extra weight, but sets off nonetheless, although probably not much faster than they could manage on foot.

Tyrion can feel Brienne sobbing behind him, great wracking gusts that shake her whole body. Jaime hands the reins to Tyrion.

“Come here,” he hears his brother whisper, and feels him fold Brienne into his arms. Their armour clashes and scrapes together, and then there is the unmistakeable sounds of kissing.

“Thank you for coming for me,” he hears Jaime whisper. “Thank you for killing a Queen for me.”

Brienne sobs, and laughs, and sobs again. Tyrion looks down, at his own hands, holding the reins, guiding the rounsey towards White Harbour.

Eventually, the poor horse can take no more and they are forced to stop for the night. They are several hours away from Winterfell now, covered by miles of forest and field and it has snowed hard enough to cover their tracks the whole time they have been travelling. They feel safe enough to make camp.

Brienne and Renly are both asleep, both wrapped in a cloak, cradled in Jaime’s arms and snuggled against his chest. Brienne wakes and sleepily sets about making a camp for the night, feeding and seeing to the rounsey, collecting wood for a fire. Tyrion attempts to light it for her, but fails abysmally.

Jaime lays out the two bedrolls and they make a cocoon of blankets and cloaks. Sheltered as they are by the trees, and warmed by the fire, Tyrion falls asleep easily.

He is woken at dawn by the fire crackling loudly, woken from a dream about dragons, and men screaming, and men burning.

Jaime is meant to be on watch at this time, but he and Brienne are making love on their bedroll, under their blankets, trying to be discrete and quiet, but failing at both. The blanket slips in their fervour and Tyrion can see they lie spooned against each other, breeches pushed down around their thighs, gasping desperately with every thrust of Jaime’s hips. Jaime has his hand in her tunic, and she has both of hers between her own legs. Part of it is battle-lust, Tyrion can tell, but most of it is that they are just plain crazy for each other.

He rolls over, troubled by what he is feeling, and tries to ignore the gasping and panting as it reaches a crescendo and then dissolves into languorous sighs.

They part with words whispered too soft for Tyrion to hear, and lingering kisses that he definitely _can_. Then Jaime starts to pack the saddlebags while Brienne feeds Renly.

By the time Tyrion gets up, his head is pounding and his hands are shaking. He waddles off into the woods to take a horrible, freezing cold, watery shit in the woods, and comes back to break his fast on a handful of horse feed.

Brienne eyes him as he eats it, her mouth set in a concerned line. “Are you unwell, Lord Tyrion?”

“He’s just not drunk,” Jaime replies for him.

“My brother has the right of it,” Tyrion confirms. “I will need wine, or this will just get worse.”

“Oh.”

He catches a glance pass between them, tight and worried.

When they are ready to go, they pack him up on the back of the rounsey, wrapped in a blanket as he is shivering so violently. Brienne sits behind him at first while Jaime walks with the babe in his arms, and then after a couple of hours, they swap. They both have to hold him up as he vomits over the side of the horse, then help him to clean himself afterwards.

Eventually, he drops dead asleep with his face pressed into the rounsey’s mane, and when he comes to, he finds that Jaime has lashed him to the saddle with a sword-belt. The woods have thinned out now to be replaced by grim, snow-covered moors offering little shelter from the elements.

As night falls once more, they come upon a farmhouse, too burned out to offer enough protection from the cold, but beyond it, a shepherd’s hut that has survived pretty much intact.

Jaime makes a fire while Brienne tends to Tyrion, mopping the sweat from his brow and settling him on his bedroll under his blankets, a rusty basin by his side to catch his vomit should he need it.

He needs it. Several times – the last of which occurs just as light begins to creep through the hut’s single window, illuminating the semi-naked form of his good-sister, who is sitting on his brother’s face.

“Sorry,” Jaime says, as Brienne pulls her breeches on in the hut’s far corner, her face aflame with shame.

Tyrion just groans and vomits more.

This is how it will be, he thinks miserably. A lifetime on the run in Essos, listening to Jaime and Brienne fucking, watching them be happy, without even wine to dull his pain.

It’s not that he minds – they deserve their happiness and all three of them have fought hard for them to have it. But this is _their_ happiness. He had never envisaged having to be a part of it, other than to be Uncle Tyrion, living on the other side of the Rock.

Midway through the afternoon, White Harbour finally comes into view on the horizon. It’s a blur of square buildings, white in the snow, quite painful to Tyrion’s eyes from the swaying, nauseating back of the rounsey.

There is quite the crowd at the gates too, refugees from all over the North looking to escape from Westeros, escape the dead, escape Cersei. They bring with them the horrors of war, the starvation, the disease, the horrific injuries, and in some cases, even the dead.

Tyrion sees his brother flinch as he notices a half-starved woman carrying a babe who looks to have died some weeks ago, clutching him in fingers so thin they look like talons. Jaime looks away, and holds Renly all the tighter.

Once through the gates, the smell of the city hits them all, the smells of people and privies, hot food and strong ale. Despite Brienne’s promises, their hunting had proved fruitless – all three of them are ravenous.

Tyrion presses a thick, bejewelled ring into the palm of a street vendor – one of his father’s he had retrieved from Casterly Rock. In return he gets three kidney pies and a mug of warm, weak wine which is the very finest he has ever tasted in his life.

The hubbub hurts his ears, and he wraps up tight in his blankets and tries to sleep, and tries to hold the pie in.

They make their way down to the docks, to find it predictably packed with refugees trying to beg their way onto the boats. The captains are largely bedecked in gold and jewels and have armed guards to keep their boats from being swamped. They are clearly making fortunes from people’s desperation right now.

One of them, a very pale-skinned man with hair dyed three shades of green, spots the three of them making their way down the harbour, looking a good deal cleaner and better equipped than most of those around them.

“Hello, my Lords!” he calls out in a thick accent. “Oh, and Lady! Forgive me!”

Brienne scowls.

“Are you looking to leave this fine place? We’re the only ship departing this day.”

“We are,” says Jaime.

“That’s a good horse,” says the Captain. “Sturdy, to be carrying all three of you. And your babe, of course.”

“Might we exchange him for passage?” asks Brienne.

“The babe or your horse?” The Captain laughs uproariously.

“The _horse_ ,” Brienne says, unamused.

“You would be surprised, my good Lady, what people have offered me for passage out of Westeros recently.”

The Captain pretends to think about her offer.

“I suppose he would be enough to buy passage for one of you. The little man, perhaps.”

“ _One_ of us?” asks Jaime incredulously.

“Horses are not worth what they used to be,” the Captain shrugs. “But a trip to Essos …”

“We have very little else,” Jaime says.

“I am seeing two _very_ nice swords.”

“No,” say Brienne and Jaime, both at once.

The Captain leans over the edge of the boat, as if to talk to them all confidentially. “That’s a shame. Because I hear there are Dothraki bloodriders headed to this very port even as we speak, looking to avenge their slain Khaleesi.”

“What do you know about that?” Brienne snarls, her hand going straight to Oathkeeper’s ornate hilt.

The Captain laughs again. “I’m not interested in your Westerosi sheepshit politics, believe me. But I hear the Dragon Queen was killed by a tall woman and a man with one hand, and since you fit that description pretty well, I thought perhaps you might be keen to leave the country with some haste ...”

Jaime and Brienne stare at each other.

“Also,” says the Captain. “There is the added danger of a dragon flying over to eat my ship whole, so I think it’s going to take something pretty spectacular to help you.”

“All right,” says Jaime suddenly.

“ _What_?!” Brienne turns to him, her mouth open. He’s already unbuckling his sword belt.

“Fuck it,” he says to her. “They’re _swords_. Symbols of my father’s hubris, mostly. There are other swords.”

He hands Widow’s Wail over without hesitation. Brienne looks like she is going to be sick.

“Jaime,” she breathes. “It’s Oathkeeper …”

“I gave that sword to you because I loved you,” he says. “I couldn’t … _say_ it, not even to myself at that point, but I loved you and I wanted you to know. If we get on this ship, you won’t need it any more – we’ll have the rest of our lives for me to show you. We’ll be _together_ , with Renly. With any other children that we have.”

She’s speechless, her eyes huge and locked on his. Tyrion feels that same pang, the same one he has been feeling ever since they left Winterfell.

“It’s a beautiful sword,” Jaime continues. “But it’s a trinket, a bauble, compared to our beautiful son. That is the way we have to see things now.”

She nods, and allows him to undo her swordbelt too.

Jaime hands Oathkeeper to the green-haired Captain with a nod. “We’ll need to leave within the hour.”

“Right you are, my Lord. We can set sail straight away. I will get my women to prepare your cabins.”

He goes off, shouting orders at people on the deck. Jaime lets out a breath of relief. He slithers down from the back of the rounsey, and takes Renly from Brienne so that she can do the same.

She turns, and holds her hands out to help Tyrion.

“No,” he says.

“No?”

“I’ve decided I’m not going,” he tells her.

Jaime spins around. “What?”

“I’m sorry. But I – I belong in Westeros. It’s my home.”

“Did you not hear the man?!” Jaime says. “Daenerys’ bloodriders are on their way here now. Bloodriders don’t stop until they have avenged their Khal.”

“I’m not the one they’re looking for,” he reminds them. “Besides, I’m pretty sure I can talk my way out of it. It’s always worked out so far.”

“What are you going to do?” asks Brienne.

“I’m going to help Jon Snow win this war,” he says. The plan not even fully formed before it comes out of his mouth. “The White Walkers, Cersei … he might be a King, and apparently a dragon rider, but he’s a Stark. He’s going to need the help of a Lannister.”

“No,” says Jaime. Angry. Upset. “ _No,_ Tyrion. You don’t belong there with them. You belong with us. You need to come with _us_.”

“And do what? Settle down with you in domestic bliss? Help you raise your ten beautiful children? You’ve won your war, Jaime. Both your wars. You’re alive, and you have the chance to be happy. Take it. I’m not done here yet.”

“Tyrion …”

“I’ll find you. I promise. When the war’s over, I’ll come and find you both.”

He turns the rounsey around carefully, wanting to walk away before he changes his mind, before he starts crying. It’s going to be a long trek back to Winterfell, trying not to fall off this beast the whole way.

But Jaime runs in front of him, grabs the reins.

“Jaime,” says Tyrion. “You won’t change my mind.”

“No,” says Jaime. “My – my golden hand is in the saddlebags.” He pulls it out. Stuffs it in a pocket.

“Oh.”

But Jaime grabs him, pulling him close in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for my life, for Brienne. For our son. Thank you for _everything_.”

Brienne grabs his hand, too, holds it and squeezes it. “Be careful,” she says.

“Of course, my Lady.”

And he rides off, back to Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to say sorry to everyone who has commented but who hasn't had a reply yet on the last chapter. I'm getting there, but wanted to crack on with this while it was still fresh and I had momentum.
> 
> How can I ever, ever say thanks enough to CaptainTarthister this time around? She has been exemplary - she helped me out of more dilemmas than ever before, cheered me on, got me rallied, and then sobbed enthusiastically over the final result. 
> 
> Give her all your thanks, she deserves them!


	12. Epilogue - Jaime IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fifteen years later ...

Jaime wakes up in Brienne’s arms.

She’s hot – the hot sun bright on her tanned salt skin, lighting up every hair. Every freckle. He presses his lips to the sweat on her shoulder and thinks what he thinks every time he wakes in her arms. _This is a gift_.

He has thought this every day for fifteen years now, every time he has woken to Brienne beside him, underneath him, on top of him. In camp after camp, then home after home, place after place. _This is a gift. This is a gift._

Jaime rises, stretches, pushes aside the linen they use to keep the insects at bay while they are sleeping, and pads naked to the privy. It’s mid-afternoon, but the house is still swelteringly hot – they ate their midday meal and went to bed as they always do, to miss the worst of the day’s heat. To fuck, slowly and languorously, and fall asleep in a sweaty, satisfied heap.

In the next room, the room they use as his office, Jaime hears his daughter Dayna arguing with someone in the common tongue. At first he thinks nothing of it – she’s probably in conflict with her sister again – but then he sees through the window that Tyri is outside, helping Renly patch his boat before he goes out to check his nets. Who else would she be talking to in the common tongue?

Jaime creeps closer to the door. It’s a man’s voice he hears, arguing back. A deep voice, melodious and serious. A voice Jaime has not heard in many, many years.

He picks up his breeches from the bedroom floor and shrugs them on. Throws a tunic over his head and ties his long hair back.

He opens the door, but just a crack. Wanting so much for it to be true. Worried so much that it isn’t.

“Lannister,” the man’s voice says. “Jaime Lannister.”

A bolt of lightning goes up Jaime’s spine. It is. _It is_.

“You’ve got the wrong person,” says Dayna. “So why don’t you fuck off our island, you ugly little creature – go back to Weird-Tiny-Man-Land? Unless you want to see our steel?”

Jaime opens the door the rest of the way.

It’s Tyrion – Tyrion, standing there, Tyrion in front of his desk, in his home, Tyrion, surrounded by the island guards – Tyrion looking exasperated at Jaime’s daughter.

Tyrion – his hair and beard almost fully grey, leaning on a cane. Tyrion with an eye patch embroidered with a golden lion, covering his left eye.

He looks up. Sees Jaime. His face crumples.

“Jaime …” says Tyrion.

“Father?” says Dayna. “You know this little child-man?”

Jaime falls to his knees and embraces his brother. Hard. Feeling tears roll down his face. Tyrion squeezes him back, as hard as he can. Jaime feels him sobbing too.

“Father?”

Around them, the guards, most of them young recruits that he and Brienne trained, look at each other – puzzled, uncomfortable.

Jaime remembers himself. Stands up and wipes his eyes. “As you were,” he says in Low Valyrian. “This is Tyrion. He’s my – my _friend_. From Westeros. He’s welcome here.”

They file out, and Dayna goes with them, still eyeing Tyrion with suspicion.

“I’m sorry,” says Jaime to his brother in the Common Tongue. “We have to be careful about visitors.”

“Jaime …” Tyrion breathes, as if he can’t truly believe his brother stands before him.

Once they have composed themselves, Jaime takes Tyrion out of the house. They leave the town via the main gate, under the watchful eye of the guards, and go for a walk together along the white sand beach. It feels strange – Jaime feels underdressed for the first time in a decade, and Tyrion sweats profusely in his boiled leather and cloak. Hobbling on his stick in obvious pain.

“It took me a long time to find you,” Tyrion says once they are well beyond the walls. “I’ve been looking five years. You hid yourselves well.”

“Not well enough,” Jaime says ruefully. “A couple of the Dothraki bloodriders beat you here … about three years ago, still looking to avenge Daenerys.”

“Oh?”

Jaime tilts his head, sucks air through his teeth. “She buried them in my vegetable garden.”

Tyrion laughs, that same dark, sardonic laugh that Jaime has missed so much. “Ahhh, Brienne,” he says.

“She has not changed, brother. But you – how did you come to lose your eye?”

“Remember at White Harbour? How I told you I could talk my way out of the trouble we were in?”

“Yes.”

“I _almost_ did.”

“They took your eye!? That’s barbaric!”

“The Dothraki argued for gelding me, so I can’t complain.”

“Gods, Tyrion …”

“So,” Tyrion says, looking back up the beach to Jaime’s home. Jaime’s town. Jaime’s life. “How did this happen? I heard rumours, back on the mainland, about a pair of Westerosi knights, leading a community of former slaves. A successful one, I gather. Took me a while to believe it might be you. My brother, leading a community?”

Jaime smiles. “It is a long story.”

“I have waited a long time to hear it.”

Jaime points to a rock, worn flat by the tide, that sits baking in the afternoon sun. Tyrion nods gratefully, and they make their way over to it, sitting on its hot, smooth surface. Tyrion groans with relief, massaging his knees in both hands.

Jaime looks out at the ocean, out towards the mainland of Essos. “When we left you, when we first arrived in Essos, Brienne and I sold our services as mercenaries. Bodyguards, advisers mostly. We did well. Turns out it’s considered quite prestigious for a nobleman to have Westerosi-trained guards. Who knew?”

Tyrion smiles.

“We worked our way up, got a good reputation, and just after the twins were born we ended up in the household of a former Master of Astapor.”

“Twins?” asks Tyrion. “You have twins?”

Jaime smiles. “You met Dayna.”

“The girl inside? I guessed she was your daughter. She has her mother’s look about her. And her height.”

“She does! As does her twin sister too. Named Tyri.”

“Tyri …”

“For you.”

“Oh, Jaime …” Tyrion hugs his brother again, tears in his remaining eye.

“Slavery continues, after a fashion, for some of the Masters, despite the efforts of Daenerys. But they can’t be too open about it. Former slaves have organised themselves – their forces can be quite formidable, and they attack any Master they hear about, try to free his slaves. So mostly, Masters are those who can afford to defend their slaves. They are vastly wealthy - the one we worked for had an enormous palace – huge walls about the grounds. His own city, almost. Brienne and I helped him to defend it – and we lived well there, our children had everything they could want. But it never sat easy for us.”

“No,” said Tyrion. “I expect not.”

“When the time came, when the Master had a conflict with another Master and the two households went to war, we took advantage. We freed most of the slaves who wanted to go, from both households, and we all escaped here to this island. It was uninhabited, save for a few pirate camps, and we made short work of those. We built ourselves a town, made ourselves a community. We grow food, we trade, we look after ourselves.”

“And _you_ rule?”

“Rule is a bit strong. There’s a council to make decisions, but Brienne and I, and the girls, we … we’re in charge of protecting these people. I’m sort of – a _figurehead,_ really _._ ”

“How many live here?”

“A hundred, when we got here. But now almost double that. We’ve had people join us, and there’s been a _lot_ of babies.”

“It’s a beautiful part of the world,” Tyrion says softly.

“It is. It’s not always been easy, I can’t lie. We lost a lot of people when winter turned to spring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There was a – a fever – it came in with the traders we think. The healers couldn’t do much. We lost twenty-seven in under a moon. Including our youngest.”

“Oh, Jaime …”

“Sel, his name was, for Brienne’s father. He was four.”

Jaime looks away. Even after six years, it’s still too painful to talk of Sel – too painful to think of him, too, his wide smile, his untidy hair. His big green eyes. He would have been ten this year.

Tyrion is looking over the town, at the walls and the watchtowers, at the marketplace, at the homes and gardens and fields and streets. The children playing and the adults walking and talking and planting and fetching and carrying.

“The Kingslayer’s town …” he marvels.

Jaime flinches. “I have not been hailed Kingslayer in over a decade,” he says darkly. “I would ask you, please, Tyrion – not to repeat it in front of my children. They know nothing of what we were in Westeros.”

Tyrion regards him with curiosity. “Yes,” he says. “Your daughter that I met – Dayna?”

“Yes.”

“She had never even heard the name Lannister …”

“Never.”

“Why?”

Jaime sighs. “Back in Essos, we thought it might put them in danger. And here – it doesn’t matter. Who cares if I am Tywin Lannister’s son? Or that Brienne was pledged to House Stark? Or that Renly was – “

“The Battleborn –“

“The Battleborn!” It makes Jaime laugh to think of it. “I will take you to meet our Battleborn soon – it will tickle you to know that all that destiny you built for him could not be further from his mind.”

“Oh?”

“And Daenerys – thinking he was destined to ride a dragon! He wants to be a fisherman! He fights well enough, he can handle a sword to protect himself, but his passion is his little boat, the ocean and his nets. He feeds us well.”

Tyrion is silent.

“It might not be a glorious life, and maybe no one will write songs for us, but we have lived well since we saw you last, Tyrion. Well, and happily for the most part.”

“I can see that, Jaime,” Tyrion says, his voice deep and sad.

“Then smile for us, brother.”

“I would. But I do not think you will like what I have to say next.”

Jaime swallows. His brother looks up at him imploringly, and then takes a scroll from his belt. He passes it to Jaime. Helps him to unroll it, smoothing it out against the flat rock they sit on. Holding it down with his small fingers pressed against Jaime’s.

Jaime reads. Reads it again, slowly and haltingly – it has been some years since he has read Common. He barely speaks it outside of his own household. He rolls it up and tucks it into his own belt. “I think we should not talk of this without Brienne,” he says.

Tyrion nods.

They walk back up the beach together in silence, Tyrion stumbling once on an unseen rock, his stick going out from under him and having to be caught by Jaime. Jaime is surprised by how thin his brother feels, how delicate.

They make their way slowly back through the gates, where Jaime is stopped at once by the day’s Guard Captain with a report. They have several staffing issues which Jaime approves some overtime for some of the more experienced men.

As they pass the house, there are a couple of people waiting to see him there, too, both with queries about the water supply system, which Jaime promises he will raise at the council meeting on the morrow.

He feels Tyrion’s eyes on him as he talks to people – curious, surprised.

They find Brienne in the town’s training yard, a fenced off square of sandy land where she has several young recruits, including their daughters. She’s drilling them with sword and quarterstaff, dressed in light leather armour, her hair pushed back and her muscular arms bare. The sight of her fighting, even just training, stirs Jaime still, and were this another day, another circumstance, he might have thought of an excuse to take her back to their house, back to their bed.

She looks up as Jaime approaches – sees Tyrion and reacts with a start.

The boy she is training, the son of the town’s blacksmith, takes the opportunity to lunge at her with his staff, but she knocks him backward without even glancing back at him, tripping his feet out from under him and landing him on his rump in the sand.

Dayna and Tyri laugh, their identical ratty blonde braids swinging behind their heads. Jaime looks at them both with sadness, seeing his daughters suddenly with new eyes. He beckons to Brienne, and she comes over, embracing Tyrion in a fierce hug.

“You have barely changed,” Tyrion says to her. “It is good to see you, Brienne.”

“And you, Tyrion,” she says with a smile. “I often wondered if you would ever find us here.”

“It took me quite some time, my Lady,” he tells her.

They sit down on the low wall together, and Jaime hands Brienne the paper he has tucked in his belt. She unrolls it and reads it, her eyebrows reaching ever-skyward as she does.

“A _pardon_?” she says, her voice low so it doesn’t carry to the girls. “From King _Aegon Targaryen_?”

“A lot has changed since you left.”

“What is this?” Brienne asks.

“It’s a formality. Obviously. But it means you – both of you – _all_ of you, can come home.”

Brienne opens her mouth to speak. But then she looks to Jaime. Unsure. Confused.

“I can see that you have built a life here,” Tyrion begins.

“We’ve built _two hundred_ lives here, Tyrion,” says Jaime.

“Yes, you have. And you have ruled well, I can see that. I can see people respect you, and depend on you, and look to you for leadership.”

Jaime isn’t sure that’s strictly true, but he nods anyway.

“And that …” continued Tyrion. “That is what I need from you as well. In Westeros. Specifically – Casterly Rock.”

“The Rock?” Jaime asks. In truth he has not thought of the Rock in some time now. He can not even remember the last time it he had thought of it as home.

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m not in the best of health. Who knew that a lifetime of drinking and whoring would have such a detrimental effect on one’s body?”

Jaime smiles sadly.

“I am Hand of the King. Managing the Westerlands as well has become more than I can, well – _manage_. And it’s more than that, too. I – I need family. I have been married twice since you left,” Tyrion says. “The first, to a Manderly girl, very sweet, very kind. She was killed during the Fall of Winterfell during our second year of marriage. My second wife, well – I am wed to Sansa Stark, this time as a match of love.”

“Congratulations,” says Brienne with a soft smile.

“Indeed. But, well, to my sadness … neither of my marriages has been blessed with children,” he says, with a forlorn look at Dayna and Tyri, who are going at each other with wooden swords now. “I have come to believe that I am not able to produce an heir to the Lannister line.”

“Oh,” says Jaime. “I’m so sorry.”

“So you understand. You … Renly … your girls … you must return to Westeros, or after I die there will be no more Lannisters in Casterly Rock.”

Jaime and Brienne look at each other. Neither wanting to be the first to speak, neither knowing what to say anyway. Then, suddenly, Tyrion stands up. Staring past them, out towards the ocean with his mouth open in shock. Like he’s seen a ghost.

Coming in from the beach with his catch in his hand, barefoot, bare-chested, sandy-skinned, a wide grin on his face, is Renly.

“The Battleborn …” Tyrion breathes. “It has to be! Gods – he is the very living image of you, Jaime!”

“So I have been told,” Jaime admits.

“Seven hells – we would not have covered up his parentage for long at Winterfell!” Tyrion says.

“No,” Brienne laughs. “I have often thought the same.”

Jaime smiles too, but it is a sad smile. He looks at his son now, suddenly with eyes he has not used since they crossed the ocean. He realises that Renly is the same age as he had been when he was raised to the Kingsguard, the same age he was when he fucked Cersei in Eel Alley, when he had given up Casterly Rock for the first time … and just two years younger than he had been when he had killed Aerys.

Could he bear to see his Renly in Westerosi plate – bearing steel? To see him squiring, playing at tourneys, being knighted and going to war? This boy, this precious boy they had murdered a queen to protect …

Somehow, suddenly, what Tyrion has asked of them seems as dark, as insidious, as what Daenerys had wanted.

Renly spots Tyrion now, a mixture of laughter and curiosity on his face. Aside from his family, he has met maybe only a handful of Westerosi in his life. And never a dwarf.

“Who is this, Father?” he asks, wiping his wet hands on his breeches and pushing back his short hair.

For a moment, Jaime can’t answer. He wants to tell Renly that Tyrion is his brother, but the words stick in his mouth.

“I am Tyrion Lannister,” his brother steps in at once, with a bow. “I knew your family in Westeros.”

“Pleased to meet you, Tyrion Lannister!” Renly says, saying the name as if it were all one word. “Are there many in Westeros who are as small as you?”

“No,” says Tyrion. “I am what is known as a dwarf, and it is quite rare.”

“Would you care to eat with us this evening?” asks Renly. “I have had a good catch this day.”

“I would _love_ to,” Tyrion says. He seems unable to take his eyes off Renly.

Brienne pockets the parchment with their pardon on, and invites Tyrion to follow Renly to the house. Her eyes catch Jaime’s as they both stand. She smiles a sweet, worried smile, and he tries to return it.

In the training square, Dayna and Tyri have progressed from training swords to teeth and nails, and are kicking seven shades of shit out of each other in the sand. Brienne drags them apart and sends them in to wash for dinner, promising her students an extra session on the morrow.

Jaime watches his daughters sadly too – trying to picture them in silk gowns, being tutored by a Septa. Trying to find highborn marriage matches for them.

He wouldn’t have a hope in all the seven hells.

He loves his daughters with every fibre of his being, but they are not pretty girls, not by Westerosi standards, or anywhere else in the world that Jaime has been. They have Brienne’s height, already at thirteen, and both are as big and broad as she as well. They have her freckles, her crooked teeth, her ragged untidy hair.

They will make excellent warriors – they have her strength and his instincts. But Westerosi brides?

He fears it would crush them, as it once crushed her. The rejection. The mocking.

He can’t bear the thought of it, having to throw balls for them, having to negotiate with Lords for their horrified sons’ hands, having to sell his girls like livestock to make political matches, shrewd and uncaring as Tywin. Knowing what everyone would be saying when their backs were turned – and that his girls, his lovely, spirited, strong-willed girls, would be abused and dishonoured in their marriages as even Cersei, for all her beauty, had been.

While Renly cleans and cooks his catch, and the girls argue about literally everything, Jaime tries to dress for dinner. He goes through his wardrobe about five times, but everything is casual. Aside from his armour, everything is light leather, light linen – nothing he would have worn outside his bedchamber back in Westeros.

Brienne comes in to change out of her leathers too, putting on a blue linen dress that has long been Jaime’s favourite. He tells her it is because it complements the colour of her eyes, but really, it’s because he can see her nipples through it.

She chooses a necklace too, and Jaime holds her hair out of the way so she can fasten it.  It’s a beautiful thing, made by one of their own, a former slave who is now a trader and craftsman. The necklace is made from shells found on their own beach, and sits perfectly in the perfect hollow of her collarbone.

They don’t speak to each other – and the piece of parchment, their pardon from the Iron Throne, sits on the bed like a jug of wildfire between them. Brienne buries it under their pillows before they leave the room.

They walk through the office and onto the deck. The girls have gathered the pillows and are, of course, fighting over who gets which one. Tyrion is sitting already, watching them with a clear mixture of amusement and bemusement.

Renly comes in, his platter of herb-baked fish and the vegetables that Jaime grew in their little garden held high above his head. He plonks it down on the deck, in the middle of the pillows, and he and the girls attack it mere seconds later, digging in to tear off the soft, flaky fish with their fingers. Pulling it off and piling it straight into their mouths. Chatting and laughing without waiting to swallow.

Jaime and Brienne sit awkwardly, watching the scene for the first time with Westerosi eyes. Trying to imagine their children eating like this in the great hall of Casterly Rock. The looks of horror.

“Wine, Tyrion?” offers Jaime, just to divert his brother’s attention somewhat.

But Tyrion shakes his head. “I’ve had to stop,” he says, with deep regret. “The maesters inform me that my drinking was making my legs much worse.”

With that, Tyrion leans forward to the platter of food before him, and pulls out a handful, much as his nephew and nieces are. He samples some of the fish.

“It’s delicious,” he praises Renly, who thanks him with a wide grin.

Jaime and Brienne eat little. Jaime can barely swallow, and Brienne looks pale and sick. The children lead the conversation, quizzing Tyrion about the Seven Kingdoms, asking question after question about life there, about how he knows their parents.

Tyrion dodges most of them artfully, or expands upon histories and landscapes and buildings instead of personal details. The girls have always had a passing interest in their Westerosi heritage, but Renly never until tonight. But now he’s lapping it up, studying Tyrion intently, looking at his hair, his beard, the stitching on his comparatively elaborate clothes.

When he’s finished his meal, and licked his fingers clean, he asks Tyrion if he can touch the lion embroidered on his cloak. Tyrion consents, watching Renly closely as he slowly traces the line of the golden Lannister lion with the calloused tips of his fingers.

“What is it?” he asks with wonder.

“It’s a lion,” Tyrion says softly. “The symbol of my house.”

“Of your house?” asks Dayna. “What – your house is shaped like a lion?”

“In Westeros, your house is … your family. And those loyal to your family.”

“Were mother and father loyal to your family?” asks Tyri, still picking at the leftover vegetables on the platter.

“The Lannisters had lots of bannermen,” Tyrion says. “Fewer now, but then there are far fewer people in Westeros altogether.”

“What happened?” asks Renly.

“War,” says Tyrion. “A long, long war, and before that, another war. The Seven Kingdoms has not known peace for a long, long time.”

Once the plate is clean, Brienne clears away and Jaime reaches for his box of sourleaf. He does not partake often, but tonight he thinks he may need some. The girls and Renly spot some of their friends walking along the beach and go out after them, calling and shouting and laughing.

“You don’t want to come back, do you?” asks Tyrion after a long, long silence.

“No,” says Jaime, chewing his sourleaf slowly. “Does that surprise you, brother?”

“I don’t know,” Tyrion says after a moment. “After fifteen years, I did not know what to expect when I found you.”

“I’m sorry.”

They both look out towards the beach, where Tyri has Dayna in a headlock, and Renly is arm in arm with a pretty young girl he knows from their town, chatting and laughing and smiling at her with warm eyes.

“The Lannisters will continue,” Jaime says. “It might be … different, but –“

“Your children are not Lannisters. They know nothing of their heritage, nothing of their history, their family.”

“What should I have told them?” Jaime snaps.

“I don’t know … something. Anything. Don’t you think they deserve to know who they are?”

“Who they are? Pray tell me – what part of proud Lannister history do you think I should have imparted to my children, brother? Should I have told them of our Father? Should they be proud to be descended from a man whose scheming and plotting burned house after house to the ground? Or perhaps I should have told them who _I_ truly am? Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. How I forsook my vows to my King, only to stab him in the back and slit his throat? Or perhaps a bedtime tale of our sweet sister Cersei? Should I tell them how I spent half my life bedding my own sister, a mad murderess who bore my children and passed them off as kings?”

“You are ashamed.”

“Are you _not_?”

“Not so ashamed that I would choose to put an end to a house that has been going since Lann the Clever.”

Jaime says nothing. He chews his sourleaf, looking at the ocean.

“In a generation,” Tyrion says after a long pause. “All that – _all_ of that – could be forgotten. Remember – our father’s father was a fool, and men played him for one more oft than not. Our father turned that around very quickly. It is the same for us – it’s our turn now, and Tywin’s legacy, Cersei’s legacy, doesn’t have to be who the Lannisters are. Not any more.”

“We wouldn’t be given the chance. I tried my hand at redemption, remember? I was thrown in a cell and then they tried to murder me. Tried to take my son from me.”

“Things are different now, Jaime.”

“Things are _never_ different in Westeros.”

Tyrion stares at him. “All right,” he says softly. “I understand that you – and Brienne – have a lot of baggage about what happened in Westeros. Entirely justified. You literally had to run for your lives. But, tell me something – are you _really_ happy for the Battleborn to grow up to be a fisherman?”

“It’s what he _wants_.”

“It’s what he _thinks_ he wants – because he doesn’t know he’s the heir to Casterly Rock.”

“He doesn’t even know what Casterly Rock is.”

“That’s my point. You’ve made the decision _for_ him, Jaime. For your daughters, too.”

“They are happier here.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I _do_. I know my children. I have been here for them, I have raised them from babies, held them and loved them and looked after them every day of their lives. There is nothing for them in the Seven Kingdoms that can make any of them as happy as they are right here and right now. Yes, they would be richer, more powerful. But power corrupts – we’ve seen that again and again and again. And truly – what can riches buy that we do not have in this town we built ourselves?”

“Security, Jaime. Armies. You live in huts – surrounded by a wooden wall. It’s idyllic and beautiful here, but what happens when the slavers come to this island of yours? Or pirates? In greater numbers than you and Brienne can defend against?”

“You think we should move to Westeros for _security_? Did you not just sit here and tell my children how utterly destroyed by war our home country has been? How decimated the population? We have been safer here for fifteen years than we _ever_ have been at any point in my lifetime in Westeros.”

“Then what about maesters? You lost a child to a fever already because you did not have access to civilised medical care.”

Jaime stands up. The words are like knives – he can’t hear them. He can’t. He _can’t._

He can’t even look at his brother. He pushes his way back into the house without another word.

Inside, sitting by the door where she can listen, is Brienne. Her blue eyes big and sad.

Tyrion follows him almost immediately. “Jaime, I’m sorry,” he says. “That was unforgivably low, I can’t apologise enough.”

“I don’t want to speak of this any more,” Jaime says. “I’m tired. It’s been a busy day.”

“Of course,” says Tyrion. “I too am tired. I am too ill for travelling really. I shall leave tomorrow - I don’t want to intrude on your lives any further.”

“You are _not_ ,” says Jaime with a sigh. “You are my brother – you could never intrude.”

“Then why did you not introduce me to your children as their uncle?”

Jaime falls silent. He does not have an answer for that.

“Have Tyri’s room,” says Brienne. “She can share with her sister tonight, though I suspect she will not be pleased.”

“Thank you.”

Brienne goes to call the children in from the beach, and Jaime slinks off to their bedroom. He strips himself naked and reclines on the rough pillows, looking at the ceiling. Blinking back tears he hasn’t cried in many years.

Outside, he hears the girls complaining and squabbling, and then Renly’s easy laugh. He listens as they come indoors, get themselves ready for sleep. Getting a bucket to wash in, throwing clothes about, talking non-stop about friends and fights and fishing, half in the Common Tongue and half in low Valyrian. The sounds of his house, the sounds of his family. The sounds he has taken for granted every day for fifteen years.

He wouldn’t hear this in Casterly Rock. Living in the Lord’s chambers, he would be so far away from his children he wouldn’t hear them at night – something he and Cersei used to take full advantage of.

As a Westerosi Lord, Jaime may eat dinner with his children once a day, but it would be a formal affair, overseen by guests and servants and guards. His children would have a Septa to take care of them, and most likely Renly would be sent away to squire for another house, just as Jaime had been. Mostly, there would be formality. Mostly, there would be silence.

Jaime sits forlornly, waiting for Brienne to come to bed, but she doesn’t. Once the noise from the children has died down, he hears her talking to Tyrion out on the deck, though too softly for him to make out what they are saying.

He digs out the pardon, from under their pillows. Reads it, again and again. Even the language of it angers him. A pardon from a King to a Kingslayer, formal and gracious. Something they should be pleased by. Something they should be grateful for.

It is some hours before Brienne finally comes to bed, and when she does she looks older. Pale and haunted. She sits down on the bed carefully, as if trying not to wake him.

“Are you all right?” he whispers.

She jumps at the sound of his voice. “I thought you were asleep.”

He shakes his head. “What’s the matter?”

She shrugs. “My father’s dead,” she says softly. “I shouldn’t have asked Tyrion, I know … but I had to know. I mean, I thought he probably would have died by now. He was not a – young man.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

But then she looks at him, her eyes wide and horrified and shrieking in her head. “But the Dothraki killed him! The bloodriders. They went to Tarth right after we left, thinking I might be hiding there. They butchered my father and most of his retainers. Burned Evenfall to the ground.”

“Gods, Brienne …”

She looks down at her hands. “We got him killed, Jaime. We got all those people killed …”

“Brienne, no! No, we didn’t.”

“I never even told my father about Renly. He didn’t even know I was a mother, I was too ashamed to tell him … he _died_ for a baby he didn’t know I’d even had!”

“He was a good man, you told me that. He was a good father to you – he would have wanted us to go, to save Renly.”

She scoffs, but it turns into a sob.

There is nothing Jaime can say, so he holds her. Strokes her hair. Kisses her.

“We left so much behind, Jaime. So much unfinished.”

He pulls away, looking her intensely in the eyes. “You want to go back?”

“No!” she cries. “But is it selfish to stay?”

“Selfish?”

“We ran away, Jaime. We ran from two wars – your sister and the war against the dead. We protected Renly, and I don’t think we had a choice, but it wasn’t the honourable thing to do.”

“ _Honourable_?!” Jaime gapes at her. It is the first time he has heard her speak of honour in fifteen years. “They didn’t want our honour, _none_ of them. They had our loyalty, our experience, our expertise if they had cared to utilise us. They did not. Instead they put us in an impossible position.  We had _no_ alternative. Never forget that, Brienne. We fled, or we _died_. Renly too.”

“I know … I _know_. And I have never regretted fleeing, believe me. But we _did_ owe loyalty to Westeros, Jaime. Maybe not to the Starks or the Targaryens or to Winterfell or the Iron Throne – but I owed my loyalty to my father and to Tarth. Tarth was my birthright – and it was burned to the ground in my name.”

“Returning won’t change that.”

“No. We can’t help my father. But we can still help Tyrion.”

“Brienne ….”

“He saved us, did he not? From the moment Renly came into this world he was there for us all – never mind that he had pledged his loyalty to Daenerys. We came first. He even promised that he would marry me if it meant you and I could see each other. He _lost his eye_ because of my actions.”

Jaime sighs. “He did, yes, but -”

“Well, now he needs _us_. All of us. We have had a good life, Jaime. For fifteen years. We have had our freedom, and we have loved each other well. Perhaps it is time that we did what is _right_ now. Go home and rebuild our country. Give Tyrion the legacy he deserves.”

“No,” says Jaime.

“No?”

“ _No_. Tyrion chose to go back. He didn’t have to – he could have come with us, shared what we’ve had, every step of the way. But no – he couldn’t let go of all that Westeros political horseshit, he had to ride right back into it like a fool, even if it meant losing his eye. That’s on him.”

“Jaime!”

“It’s sad that he can’t have children, but the Lannister legacy? Is that what you want to leave here for? You want to go back to being Brienne the Beauty, the Kingslayer’s Whore, the Maid of Tarth …  for _that?_ You want our children to lose every vestige of personal freedom that they have in their lives because we owe something to the fucking Lannister legacy?”

“No …”

“No! We _don’t_. We don’t _want_ to, and that should be the end of this. Honour and loyalty and all that that … _shit_ shouldn’t even come into it.”

“Jaime, it’s for _Tyrion._ ”

“Is that what you’ll be telling yourself when you watch Renly ride off to war under the Lannister banner? Or when we marry off Tyri and Dayna to men they don’t even know to make alliances for House Lannister? That we did it for Tyrion? Must our children, and their children, and generations forever after be crushed under the wheel … for _Tyrion_? I love my brother, with all my heart. I do. But I love our children more.”

He kisses her, wanting her to feel the strength of his love through his lips, his tongue, his eyes on hers. She returns it, clinging to him with all her strength.

“It isn’t _worth it_.”

She looks away.

“Is it, Brienne? Tell me you feel the same.”

She pinches her lips together and looks away. But then she nods. “You are right,” she says. “We have fought hard for our life here – we should not give it up.”

“No. We should _not_.”

“Kiss me,” she says softly. So he does.

He kisses her with all his strength, and then pushes her back onto the bed and tries to make love to her. He tries his best, but ends up making a fool of himself when his cock just won’t get hard. It’s been a recurring problem these past few years, particularly in times of stress – but Jaime does have to accept he is in his sixtieth year. Some things just don’t work as they should any more.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes into her neck, sweaty and frustrated.

“It doesn’t matter,” she pants back, and shoves his head down between her legs instead.

No doubt Tyrion would say the maesters of Westeros could fix his aging cock too, he thinks with a smirk as he swirls her sex with his tongue. But even so …

Brienne responds at once, her breathing growing harsh and ragged and her strong thighs clamping around his head, hard enough to smother him. She, at least, is still as lusty as she ever was.

He makes her come – swiftly, expertly, with his fingers and his tongue, proud to hear her cries of pleasure despite his hopeless cock.  

Afterwards he holds her, the stump of his right arm about her waist, his left hand threaded with hers. Listening to the ocean. Listening to her breathe. Listening to his own lips, kissing the short hair at the back of her neck. Softly, softly.

“Love you …” she breathes into the night. “Love you, Jaime.”

He loves her too, always. Always.

He does not sleep well – a combination of guilt, long-buried memories and the low thrum of sexual frustration. He lies awake thinking of Tyrion just a few rooms away.

Eventually, just as the first blue light of dawn rises over the ocean, Jaime gives up. He extricates himself from Brienne’s snoring form and dresses himself before tiptoeing through the silent house to the deck.

There is still a chill in the air from night time, so he wraps a blanket about himself and sits on the pillows to watch the sunrise.

“You can’t sleep either?” It’s Tyrion, bundled up in a blanket himself, so hidden in the cushions that Jaime hadn’t seen him.

“No,” Jaime says.

“I am sorry,” Tyrion says. “I should have just … visited you. Instead I’ve brought you a burden.”

Jaime starts to say something, but Tyrion cuts him off.

“No – no, I _did_. I should have known. I should have known the moment I realised Dayna didn’t know her name was Lannister.”

“It’s funny,” Jaime says as he stares out at the ocean. “But I keep thinking of Ned Stark. The decision he made when he rode south to be Robert’s Hand. He plainly didn’t want to accept. If he’d said no …”

“You’re not Ned Stark.”

“If he’d said no, there would have been no War of the Five Kings. What a _spectacularly_ bad decision that was.”

Tyrion gives him a sideways look. “I think the spectacularly bad decision that caused the war was your decision to fuck our sister in an abandoned tower in Winterfell, was it not?”

Jaime grins. “Well, _possibly_. It didn’t help, I grant you. But Ned Stark - ”

“Jaime. You are _not_ Ned Stark.”

“No. I’m not. That’s what I’m saying. I’m not stupid enough to make the wrong decision out of a sense of duty.”

“I understand. I do. This town is your Winterfell, isn’t it. Your Casterly Rock.”

Jaime laughs. “I suppose it is.”

Tyrion sighs.

“But I regret not telling my children that you are my brother. I don’t know why I didn’t. When you come back – “

“I won’t come back.”

“Why?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. I was barely able to manage this trip, if I’m honest. My health is getting worse.”

“Tyrion …”

“And thanks to you, I have the pressing matter of finding myself a suitable heir.”

“Is there literally no-one?”

“Well, there are some _lesser_ Lannisters.”

“Oh … _Lannisport_ Lannisters?” Jaime says with a grimace.

“You see why I sailed half way around the world? But – Joy Hill still lives. Remember Uncle Gerion’s bastard? Perhaps if I found her a suitable husband …”

“She’s a lovely girl.”

“She is. But she’s not my brother.”

Jaime reaches out, and pulls Tyrion into a fierce embrace. Kisses the top of his head.

“I _will_ tell them,” he whispers. “I will tell my children you’re their uncle before you leave.”

“Thank you,” Tyrion says, with what sounds like a strangled sob. “Thank you, Jaime.”

They sit down again, closer this time. Tyrion wipes his eyes.

Jaime looks at him. “But please – let the rest come in time. They are young still, and there is so much I could not bear for them to hear.”

“They will not hear the word Kingslayer from me, I swear.”

“Kingslayer I can explain. Cersei, however …”

Tyrion laughs. “I see your point.”

They sit together, talking, laughing, poking fun at one another, as the sun rises fully over the beach, over the walls of the town. Until the town starts to stir and people are out in the streets – busy, bustling people, most of whom hail Jaime as they walk by. He hails them back by name, every one.

Until Brienne wakes too, and calls them in, to eat breakfast with the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, where do I start? 
> 
> What a summer it's been. I am so so sad to be leaving the world of Battleborn. But so happy that so many people have taken the ride with me, and been so generous with kudos and comments and support. I can't thank you all enough for being as excited as I have been.
> 
> But special, special thanks go to my sweet, wonderful, amazing friend CaptainTarthister. Those of you who have been reading along will know how much she has been there for me, helping me, guiding me, reading the same bits over and over and allaying my fears and listening to some wild ideas that never made it into the final piece. She's gone above and beyond for this story, and I can never thank her enough.
> 
> A huge shoutout to her for her help with this epilogue particularly - it was a toughie and she's held my hand the whole way through. Mwah!

**Author's Note:**

> Had this brewing for a while, I hope it's going to be an interesting one! Chapter 2 to follow soon, it's almost written.
> 
> Many thanks to the incomparable CaptainTarthister, who listened patiently as I went through the beats of this, made brilliant suggestions, and was the first to read it. Thank you for giving me the confidence to stay in the fandom and keep writing!


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